THE   GREAT   DESIRE 


BOOKS  BY 
ALEXANDER  BLACK 

The  Great  Desire 

Modern  Daughters 

Miss  Jerry 

Richard  Gordon 

A  Capital  Courtship 

The  Girl  and  the  Guardsman 

Miss  America 

The  Story  of  Ohio 

Thorney 


THE 

GREAT    DESIRE 

BY 

ALEXANDER  BLACK 


"Obey  thy  cherished  secret  wish." 

WALT  WHITMAN 

"  When  the  desire  cometh,  it  is  a  tree  of  life." 

PROVERBS  ziii :  12 

"  The  desire  of  ail  nations  shall  come." 

HAOQAI,  ii:  7 

"  The  di/iculty  in  life  is  the  choice." 

GEORGE  MOORE 


HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 


THE  GREAT  DESIRE 


Copyright,    1919,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  October,  1919 

M-T 


TO 

F.  E.  O'DELL 


CONTENTS 


PART  ONE   i-x. 
PART  TWO   i-vn. 
PART  THREE  i-ix. 
PART  FOUR   i-xn. 


FAGE3 
1 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD    .    .    . 

NEIGHBORS 40 

THE  HIDDEN  RIVER      ...  95 

CHANGED  HORIZONS       .    .    .  138 

PART  FIVE       i-xiv.    THE  BUGLE 205 

PART  SIX         i-xni.   THE  BURDEN 262 

PART  SEVEN   i-xiv.    VICTORY  .  323 


THE   GREAT   DESIRE 


THE    GREAT    DESIRE 


PART    ONE 

Babes  in  the  Wood 


AD  so  we  have  come  to  the  City  of  the  Successfully 
Single;  in  a  state  of  some  excitement,  if  that  is 
to  be  a  matter  of  importance  in  this  record,  for 
one  may  not  emerge  from  silence  into  vast  sound  with 
out  experiencing  a  degree  of  disturbance. 

The  flippant  phrase  about  the  city  emanated  from 
my  fat  aunt,  herself  not  at  all  flippant,  though  an  im 
pressive  image  of  singleness.  There  will  be  no  way  of 
keeping  this  record  without  her.  It  would  be  as  im 
possible  not  to  quote  her  as  not  to  respect  her.  Both 
spiritually  and  physically  she  has  an  amplitude.  I 
realized  this  afresh  as  she  gathered  us  in. 

There  was  no  mistaking  the  sincerity  of  her  wel 
come. 

"Well,  well,  Sarah!" 

I  also  was  kissed.  Thereafter  she  stood  in  the  mid 
dle  of  the  little  parlor,  her  arms  crossed  over  her  great 
bosom,  and  cried,  gaily: 

"Say  it,  Anson! — say  it! — I'm  fatter  than  ever!" 

"The  more  I  see  of  you — "  I  began.  The  rest  was 
smothered. 

Yes,  she  was  breathlessly  pleased  to  see  us.  That  was 
plain.  And  Sarah  and  I,  after  the  ordeal  of  the  station 


S  5*H;E  GREAT  DESIRE 

and  the  taxicab  and  the  uproar,  felt  the  high  joy  of 
reaching  an  anchorage.  At  the  moment  my  aunt  sug 
gested  a  noble  anchorage.  There  is  something  fascinat 
ing  in  the  happy  union  of  a  profuse  body  and  a  lean, 
alert,  humorous  mind;  something  heart- warming  in 
big  gentleness.  I  am  often  reminded  of  this  by  her 
wonderfully  tender  hands.  I  can  remember  out  of  boy 
hood  that  she  could  muss  my  wiry  hair  without  irri 
tating  me,  and  even  could  let  those  magnetic  fingers 
wander  across  my  shoulder  without  seeming  to  remind 
me  that  I  carried  a  cross.  Her  hands  never  whispered, 
"Hunchback!"  .  .  . 

We  were,  it  appeared,  just  in  time  for  dinner.  This 
had  been  planned,  but  the  circumstance  seemed  a  gra- 
ciousness  of  Providence  all  the  same. 

"And  I  suppose  you  have  a  pair  .of  pale  country 
appetites,"  my  aunt  observed.  "Probably  you  will  want 
pie,  and  you  won't  get  it." 

Sarah  admitted  that  she  was  hungry.  My  sister  is 
readily  incited  to  hunger.  When  we  were  much  less 
of  age  I  tried  to  convince  her  that  the  trait  wasn't 
pretty.  She  insisted  that  this  didn't  matter.  The 
trouble  was  that  Loretta  Hinch  used  to  peck  at  food 
like  a  canary,  with  her  little  finger  turned  upward. 
Sarah  said  this  made  her  sick.  Anyway,  it  heightened  a 
prejudice. 

"It  has  been  one  of  the  ambitions  of  my  life,"  my 
aunt  remarked  on  the  way  into  the  dining-room,  "to 
fatten  up  one  or  two  scrawny  New-Englanders."  She 
always  speaks  of  New-Englanders  as  if  she  herself  didn't 
belong  to  the  breed. 

I  tried  to  be  reassuring,  but  the  truth  is  that  I  never 
in  my  life  felt  more  indifferent  toward  food.  My  emo 
tional  center  is  no  three-ring  circus.  The  one  big  thrill 
of  getting  here  at  last  has  seemed  to-night  like  all  I  have 
room  for.  I  didn't  say  this  to  Aunt  Paul.  I  suppose  it 
was  part  of  the  country  attitude  not  to  say  it. 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  3 

ii 

There  is  a  queer  little  dining-room  overlooking  a 
cavern  of  back  yards.  It  is  primly  white  and  blue.  A 
parrot  lives  between  the  two  windows.  It  screamed, 
"Well!  well!  see  who's  here!"  as  we  came  in. 

(My  aunt  has  owned  the  parrot  for  ten  years,  or 
thereabouts.  It  was  brought  from  Madagascar  by  my 
greatuncle,  the  restless  Patrick  Chester  Rowning,  in 
tribute  to  whom  my  aunt  called  the  beautiful  creature 
Pat.  She  liked  to  speak  of  it  as  "her  dear  old  boy." 
Then,  at  the  end  of  the  third  year  or  so,  quite  casually, 
without  warning,  and  so  far  as  I  know  without  comment, 
Pat  laid  an  egg.  I  am  no  ornithologist,  and  I  have  never 
happened  to  ascertain  just  how  eccentric  or  egregious 
the  intense  isolation  of  this  egg  really  was.  But  I  do 
know  that  my  aunt  was  tremendously  startled,  arid 
wrote  a  letter  about  it  within  the  hour.  How  much  she 
chuckled  over  the  affair  I  can  easily  guess.  As  for  the 
bird,  it  is  to  be  assumed,  I  suppose,  that  it  never  noticed 
the  modification  of  its  name  by  which  it  came  to  be 
addressed  thereafter  as  Patti.  Yet  a  creature  that  could 
be  so  casual  about  anything  so  momentous  as  that 
staggeringly  unique  symbol  would  be  capable  of  the 
most  ingenious  reservations.) 

There  is  also  a  cat  named  Serena.  I  am  certain  to 
dislike  Serena.  There  are  cats  one  challenges  per 
emptorily.  Others  for  cause.  Serena  is  the  kind  of  cat 
one  would  naturally  dislike  at  sight,  unless  committed 
to  all  cats. 

The  dinner  was  served  by  a  sullen  Swedish  girl  with 
what  I  suppose  is  a  remarkable  complexion.  I  won 
dered  how  she  knew  just  when  to  come  in  until  I  noticed 
certain  undulations  in  my  aunt,  and  heard  her  mutter, 
"Where  is  that  buzzer?"  This,  it  seems,  referred  to 
some  contrivance  under  the  table. 

But  let  me  tell  of  the  significant  outcome  of  this  first 


4  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

table  gathering.  (It  is  now  close  upon  midnight,  after 
a  whirl  of  talk.) 

Naturally  we  were  challenged  to  say  how  father  and 
mother  were,  and  how  the  Academy  was  to  bear  up 
under  my  defection;  whether  father  had  laid  hold  upon 
the  Harvard  youngster  who  was  to  take  my  place  in 
the  school  faculty;  how  Sarah  had  contrived  anything 
so  astonishing  as  joining  this  adventure. 

"Oh,  Aunt  Paul!"  cried  Sarah,  "I  had  to  get  away! 
The  valley  had  been  growing  smaller  and  smaller  for  a 
long  time.  Everything  that  happened  happened  over 
and  over  again.  You  have  no  idea — " 

"But  I  have,"  said  Aunt  Paul. 

"Isn't  it  always  the  women  who  go  crazy  in  the 
country?  Why,  if  I  had  stayed  there  I  should  have 
married  some  one — any  one — " 

"Don't  be  intemperate,"  chuckled  my  aunt. 

"As  I  told  Anson,  in  New  York  I  sha'n't  have  to 
marry.  There's  plenty  else." 

"My  dear,"  observed  Aunt  Paul,  "people  marry  in 
New  York.  I've  heard  of  several  cases." 

"Perhaps  I  shouldn't  mind  marrying,"  pursued  Sarah, 
"if  it  weren't  the  only  thing  I  could  do." 

"I  wish  you  would  eat  something,"  said  my  aunt. 
"You  don't  weigh  enough.  To  my  thinking  you  need 
about  ten  pounds.  I  don't  know  what  you're  going  to  do 
to  New  York,  but  if  you  expect  to  shove  it  about  with  any 
effect  you'll  need  a  little  zip,  my  dear.  This  City  of  the 
Successfully  Single  has  more  unmarried  women  than  any 
other  city  in  the  world — or  had  that  distinction  before  they 
began  killing  off  the  useful  males  on  the  other  side — and 
most  of  them  look  to  me  as  if  they  weren't  fed  rightly." 

"Then  are  they  successfully  single?"  I  asked. 

But  the  mind  of  my  spinster  aunt  had  leapt  to 
another  outlook.  "Probably  Frederick  thinks  I  am  at 
least  partly  responsible  for  the  loss  of  you.  Yet  I  don't 
see  that  I  could  have  said  no." 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  $ 

"Of  course  you  couldn't,"  said  Sarah* 

"Really,  since  Mrs.  Trover  went  away  I've  been  a  bit 
lonesome." 

"  I  should  think  you  might  have  been,"  I  said,  studying 
the  parrot. 

"As  for  that,  my  caustic  young  friend,  Patti  and 
Serena  are  mighty  good  company."  (A  cat  and  a  parrot 
are  naturally  as  well  as  traditionally  ridiculous.  How 
could  a  sane  person  deliberately  choose  to  associate 
them?) 

To  create  a  diversion  I  mentioned  the  fact  that  Sarah 
had  scarcely  stepped  from  the  train  when  she  fixed  her 
eyes  upon  a  man. 

"If  that  story  is  going  to  be  told,"  protested  Sarah, 
"I'll  tell  it  myself." 

"Out  with  it,"  said  Aunt  Paul,  with  a  signal  to  the 
Swedish  person  to  remove  the  lamb. 


in 

(I  like  to  look  at  Sarah  when  she  kindles  as  she  did 
just  then — when  the  rush  of  something  she  wants  to  say 
or  do  lifts  the  haze  in  those  olive-gray  eyes  of  hers,  throws 
a  sun  color  into  her  cheeks,  and  makes  every  line  of  that 
glowing  head  seem  a  little  more  so.  Of  course  when  the 
change  amounts  to  a  flare-up,  and  I  am  the  subject, 
the  effect  often  seems  to  me  rather  disquieting,  too 
combative.  But  at  this  moment  she  simply  was  height 
ened  in  an  attractive  way.) 

"Well,"  she  began,  "yesterday  afternoon  I  broke 
loose — ran  off  by  myself — to  take  a  last  look  at  the  old 
valley,  and  I  must  say  that  it  looked  less  stupid  than 
usual." 

I  urged  her  not  to  begin  a  story  with  a  description 
of  scenery. 

"  And  because  it  looked  less  stupid  than  usual  I  felt  as 
if  I  could  have  given  it  a  parting  hug,  as  you  might  some 


6  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

dear  old  homely  person  you.  were  glad  to  get  away  from, 
but  loved  anyway.  And  so  I  was  taking  a  straight 
cut  home  from  over  Trent  Hill — " 

"Aunt  Paul/'  I  interrupted,  "a  marginal  note,  if 
you  please.  Did  you  ^ver  see  Sarah  go  over  a  fence?" 

"Keep  quiet!"  commanded  my  aunt.  "You  haven't 
been  called  upon  to  illustrate  the  story." 

"And  getting  down  through  Peck's  pasture  I  came  to 
the  old  mill-yard.  I  could  have  gone  around  by  Totten's 
bridge,  but  the  Mauraug  is  very  shallow  there — " 

"I  know!  I  know!"  Aunt  Paul  nodded.  "I've  done 
that  many  times!" 

(Of  course  she  wasn't  so  big  then.  Nevertheless,  it 
was  impossible  to  exclude  a  certain  image.  .  .  .) 

"It  wasn't  over  a  foot  deep,"  I  heard  Sarah  saying, 
"and  I  never  had  any  respect  for  the  Mauraug,  anyway. 
Then,  when  I  was  a  little  more  than  half-way  over — with 
my  hands  full — I  knew  that  some  one  was  standing  a 
short  distance  below  on  the  opposite  bank.  Be  sure  that 
I  didn't  waste  any  time  in  finishing  the  journey.  By 
this  time  I  knew  that  the  person  was  running,  and  I 
laughed  until  I  saw  that  he  was  fishing  with  a  twig  for 
one  of  my  shoes." 

"One  of  your  shoes?"  queried  Aunt  Paul.  "Oh,  I 
see!" 

"It  was  sailing  like  a  boat,  and  he  had  a  desperate 
time,  for  he  was  trying  not  to  sink  it.  At  last  the 
current  carried  it  against  a  low  branch,  and  he  managed 
to  steer  it  over  and  land  it.  You  may  guess  how  I  felt 
when  he  came  back,  carrying  it  as  if  it  were  explosive, 
and  put  it  down  on  the  bank — sole  upward,  to  dry." 

"Very  romantic,"  murmured  Aunt  Paul.  "The 
jelly,  Hilda." 

"I  think  I  said,  *  Thank  you  very  much/  in  a  tone  that 
might  have  suggested  his  going.  And  he  did  start, 
but  stopped  a  little  way  off,  looking  across  the  river. 
*I  beg  your  pardon/  he  said.  'Can  you  tell  me  what 


BABES  IN  THE   WOOD  7 

happened  to  the  old  mill?'  He  had  one  of  those  strong, 
friendly  voices — " 

"Aunt  Paul!"  I  shamelessly  intruded  again.  "A 
psychological  moment  in  the  story — the  heroine  de 
scribes  the  man!" 

"I  forgot  to  jsay  that  I  sat  down,  and  from  where  I 
sat  he  looked  very  tall.  I'm  mentioning  his  looks  for  a 
good  reason.  His  looks  wouldn't  have  been  important 
save  for  what  happened  afterward." 

"Quite  as  usual,"  said  Aunt  Paul. 

"In  a  way  his  face  was  just  the  sort  that  should  go 
with  the  voice,  strong-looking,  and  I  guess  you  would 
say  friendly,  too.  Well,  I  told  him  that  the  mill  burned 
down  three  years  ago.  'And  old  Hannigan — '  he  asked 
then — 'does  he  still  live  here  somewhere?'  I  told  him 
that  old  Hannigan  died  last  month.  He  seemed  startled 
or  annoyed,  thanked  me  in  a  queer  voice,  and  walked 
away  in  the  direction  of  the  village. 

"When  I  got  back  to  the  Academy  a  certain  person 
who  was  reading  in  a  corner  of  the  porch  remarked  that 
quite  likely  I  didn't  know  the  news,  that  one  had  to 
sit  still  to  get  the  news,  and  when  I  asked,  'What  is 
the  news?'  a  certain  person  said,  'Biff  Hannigan  is 
back.' 

"Now  you  don't  know,  Aunt  Paul — I  didn't  know 
until  it  was  explained  to  me  then  and  there — that  Biff 
Hannigan  is  the  under-weight  champion  prize-fighter — " 

"The  light-weight,"  I  corrected. 

" — the  light-weight  champion  prize-fighter,  the  most 
famous  product  of  Naugaway,  if  you  will  believe  it, 
an  alumnus  of  the  Academy,  and  the  pride  of  old  Han 
nigan,  who  has  left  him  all  of  his  money.  I  told  Anson 
I  had  just  met  him,  and  naturally  he  couldn't  understand 
any  more  than  I  why  he  had  asked  about  the  old  man 
as  he  did. 

"After  all  this,  you  may  fancy  my  feelings  when  I 
started  down  for  the  mail  and  found  my  man  standing 


8  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

on  the  bridge  near  the  Stebbins  place,  staring  into  the 
water." 

Properly,  perhaps,  I  should  at  this  point  have  checked 
the  flow  of  the  narrative  to  tell  what  I  knew,  but  Sarah's 
impetuosity  is  so  entertaining  at  times  that  I  had  felt 
inclined,  after  her  disclosure  on  the  evening  of  our  exodus, 
supplemented  by  an  ejaculation  on  seeing  the  figure 
at  the  station,  to  choose  a  choice  moment.  Somehow 
this  didn't  seem  to  have  come. 

"Well,"  pursued  Sarah,  "I  can't  quite  explain  the 
way  I  felt.  Of  course  a  prize-fighter  seemed  interesting 
enough." 

"Naturally,"  admitted  my  aunt. 

"But  it  was  tremendously  irritating  that  he  didn't 
look  the  part.  And  his  being  a  prize-fighter,  after  all 
father  had  done  for  him,  seemed  rather  an  impertinence. 
Anyway,  there  he  stood  with  his  cap  in  his  hand,  say 
ing,  *  I've  been  thinking,  since  I  saw  you,  that  you  must 
be  Sarah  Grayl.' 

"'How  thrilling!'  I  said,  quite  like  a  peevish  girl- 
child.  So  much  for  irritation. 

"'The  last  time  I  saw  you,'  he  went  on,  'you  were  a 
little  girl — no,  not  so  very  little,  either — and,  come  to 
think  of  it,  we  walked  down  this  very  road — do  you 
remember  it? — to  go  for  the  mail.' 

"'I  don't  remember  it,'  I  said. 

"'That's  because  you  don't  recognize  me.  I  don't 
blame  you.  It  has  been  a  long  time,  and  I  suppose  I'm 
getting  old.' 

"'Oh,  I  know  who  you  are!'  I  sneered — I  suppose  it 
was  a  sneer — 'but  do  you  happen  to  feel  that  you  have 
helped  to  make  any  one  proud  to  remember  you?' 
Wasn't  that  a  nice,  righteous  outburst? 

"He  looked  down  at  the  bridge.  'I'm  sorry,'  he  said, 
very  slowly,  'that  you  feel  that  way.  Probably  I 
shouldn't  blame  you.'  I  could  see  his  look  harden. 
'New  England  charity — ' 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  9 

"'If  you  don't  mind,'  I  said,  Til  take  the  blame  for 
this  myself.  Good  afternoon.'  And  I  left  him  standing 
there  on  the  bridge. 

"The  story  ends,  Aunt  Paul,  in  Barker's  store.  There 
were  a  good  many  people  there  waiting  for  Barker  to 
finish  pounding  the  letters.  Barker  is  always  deliberate, 
but  when  he  is  serving  the  United  States  of  America 
his  deliberation  stiffens  until  he  moves  like  a  creature 
in  the  grip  of  some  stupefying  sort  of  trance.  It  was 
while  I  was  peering  at  the  old  man  through  the  boxes 
that  I  heard  Putney,  the  tanner,  who  was  sitting  on  a 
barrel,  say,  'What  are  you  going  to  do  with  all  your 
money,  Biff?'  There  was  Hannigan,  a  boyish  chap,  with 
a  crumpled  ear,  a  chin,  and  a  positively  charming  smile, 
leaning  against  the  cigar-case.  Of  a  sudden  I  was  as 
numb  as  Barker,  and  didn't  quite  get  what  the  prize 
fighter  said  about  a  cafe  with  'Hannigan'  in  electric 
lights  down  the  front. 

"Then  Putney  was  whispering,  "Sh-sh!'  for  Mr. 
Wade,  the  minister,  had  just  emerged  from  the  back  of 
the  store.  He  turned  on  Hannigan  and  looked  him 
over.  'I'm  sorry  for  that,'  he  said,  in  his  judgment-of- 
God  voice.  'Your  grandfather  was  an  honest  man.* 
You  should  have  seen  the  Biff  person — as  cool  as  if  the 
minister  had  spoken  about  the  tobacco  crop.  'Sorry 
you're  sorry,  my  friend,'  he  sent  back.  'I  guess  the  old 
man  was  straight,  and  I  guess  I'm  as  straight  as  he  was. 
Let  it  go  at  that.'  But  Mr.  Wade  held  fast.  'I  sup 
pose  you  may  think  it  no  affair  of  mine,  yet  it  seems 
a  sad  thing  to  me  to  think  of  the  money  of  a  temperate, 
frugal,  kindly  old  man  turned  over,  if  I  must  say  it,  to 
the  service  of  hell!' 

"You  may  be  sure  that  the  audience  was  a  trifle  un 
easy  at  this — everybody  was  uneasy  but  Hannigan. 
'Oh,  say!'  he  answered,  quietly  enough,  'you're  a  bit 
rough,  ain't  you?  I  don't  see  where  the  hell  comes  in. 
I'd  have  a  decent  place  or  I  wouldn't  have  any.  We 


10  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

don't  look  at  it  the  same  way,  ain't  that  it?'  Mr. 
Wade's  face  was  very  white.  'Thank  God,'  he  said, 
'that  some  of  us  see  it  differently!  I  think  I  have  no 
unkindly  feeling  for  you,  but  it  is  a  tragic  circumstance, 
all  the  same,  that  this  unoffending  valley  should  have 
bred  so  dangerous  a  person.' 

"I  thought  the  prize-fighter  was  going  to  change  his 
manner.  But  he  simply  set  his  lips.  *  You're  handing 
out  some  pretty  hard  words,  Mr.  Parson,'  was  the  way 
he  went  on.  'Maybe  you  know  your  game,  all  right. 
I  don't  say  but  what  you  do.  If  this  makes  you  feel 
any  better,  mix  it  up.'  After  an  instant's  hesitation 
Mr.  Wade  turned  and  went  away  without  his  letters." 

"And  the  chap  at  the  bridge?"  asked  my  aunt. 

Sarah  shook  her  head.  She  didn't  see  him  again — 
until  that  glimpse  in  the  station. 

"Why  do  you  suppose  he  felt  guilty?" 

I  was  about  to  speak,  or  perhaps  I  should  say  that  I 
was  debating  a  form  of  surprise  for  Sarah,  when  my  aunt 
fixed  me  with  her  appallingly  tranquil  gaze. 

"Anson,"  she  said,  "it's  your  turn." 

It  would  be  impossible  adequately  to  express  the  effect 
of  one  of  these  sudden  actions  of  my  aunt's  intuition, 
or  whatever  the  quality  is.  There  shouldn't  be  any 
such  quality.  It  is  subversive  of  the  whole  theory  of 
reason.  There  is  no  way  of  handling  it  or  of  being  pre 
pared  for  it.  If  law  can  recognize  certain  embarrass 
ments  as  against  "public  policy,"  this  quality  should 
be  reprobated  as  against  social  policy.  It  precipitates 
conversational  anarchy.  It  upsets  the  game  to  have 
some  one  jump  on  a  play  you  haven't  made.  ...  I  re 
member  her  putting  ic  this  way  (in  my  mother's  presence, 
too):  "One  of  the  most  irritating  things  about  you, 
Anson,  is  that  you  are  always  thinking  things  you  don't 
say."  Of  course  I  protested  that  this  might  be  pru 
dence.  "It  might  be,"  she  said,  "if  you  weren't  so 
horribly  transparent."  All  this  because  she  happens  to 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  11 

have  an  X-ray  eye.  The  fact  is  that  Aunt  Paul  appre 
hends  reserve,  but  she  never  will  condone  it,  never  will 
forgive  anything  thought,  good  or  bad,  and  not  said. 
If  you  draw  your  mental  check  you  must  cash  it. 

So  that  at  this  crisis  I  knew  precisely  what  she  meant 
when  she  commanded,  with  a  peremptory  mildness: 

"Tell  me  the  rest  of  it." 

Sarah  had  a  look  for  this.  I  could  feel  the  effect 
without  turning  my  head. 

"As  it  happened,"  I  confessed,  "I  afterward  saw — 
for  an  instant — passing  the  house  with  a  plunging  stride, 
the  young  man  who,  undoubtedly,  had  been  at  the  river 
and  the  bridge.  He  is  another  prodigal  son — Robert 
Hale  Rudley." 

"Hale  Rudley?"     My  aunt  stared. 

I  amplified  the  announcement.  "Hale  Rudley,  son 
of  the  Honorable  Wendell  J.  There  was  some  story 
about  him." 

"Then  it  is  my  turn,"  cried  my  aunt,  glancing  past 
us.  "He  lives  in  the  next  apartment." 

"The  next — "  began  Sarah  and  got  no  farther. 

All  three  of  us  gathered  up  the  fact.  My  aunt  made 
some  remark  about  one  flat  not  knowing  how  the  other 
flat  lives.  And  so  this  Hale  Rudley  is  at  our  elbow. 
Cities  are  droll  places. 

IV 

To-day  we  began  the  great  adjustment. 

The  street  is  very  quiet,  especially  at  night.  Seem 
ingly  there  are  no  children;  only  an  occasional  dog. 
Sometimes  the  dog  is  dragging  a  woman.  When  the 
dog  has  a  man  (a  chap  with  the  aura  of  a  butler  went 
by  this  morning)  he  acts  differently.  I  wonder  why? 
Just  as  I  was  going  to  bed  the  most  unpopular  sound  in 
all  nature  apprised  me  of  the  coquetry  of  cats.  But  I 
was  too  sleepy  to  care. 

The  apartment-house  is  of  the  older  type,  in  the  midst 


12  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

of  brick  and  brownstone  respectability  that  once  had  a 
near-relation  intimacy  with  the  f  ashionableness  of  Gram- 
ercy  Park.  I  get  a  diagonal  glimpse  of  the  old  Square, 
my  room  being  in  the  front,  shut  off  from  the  little 
drawing-room  by  rolling-doors  that  have  a  great  deal 
of  temperament.  There  are  signs,  in  the  walls,  and  in 
the  black- walnut  bookcase,  of  removals  in  my  interest. 
I  am  to  pervade  the  place  when  I  get  ready,  which  will 
be  after  Sarah  has  subsided. 

Sarah  has  been  a  whirlwind.  I  can  hear  her  hammer 
ing  now.  I  suppose  there  could  be  two  hammers  in  a 
house,  and  that  I  might  find  the  other  one.  .  .  .  But  I 
am  not  ready.  A  room  ought  to  grow. 

Probably  Sarah  would  accept  this  idea,  yet  she  wants 
eveiy thing  to  grow  in  a  day.  The  slow  processes  of 
evolution  annoy  her.  I  tell  her  that  talent  may  manage 
moments,  but  that  intervals  are  the  real  test  of  genius. 
Then  she  laughs  and  says  something  sisterly,  like, 
"How  comfortable  that  must  make  you  feel!"  She 
insists  that  patience  has  been  overrated.  When  I  re 
marked  one  day  that  something  or  other  had  been  the 
law  for  three  hundred  years,  she  answered,  crisply, 
"Then  it's  time  it  was  changed." 

I  wonder  what  will  become  of  her.  Naturally  she  al 
ways  will  be  found  on  her  feet,  but  whither  will  her  feet 
carry  her?  Which  reminds  me  that  she  was  out  this 
morning,  before  breakfast,  looking  at  the  Square.  .  .  . 

Doubtless  I  shall  accustom  myself  to  the  reiterated 
windows  across  the  way — all  with  drawn  curtains.  It 
is  impossible  to  believe  that  any  one  is  at  home.  I 
hate  drawr  curtains,  at  least  as  a  steady  eye-diet. 
Very  likely  it  would  be  against  the  domestic  law  to  take 
mine  down.  However,  I  can  fling  them  back. 

Close  to  the  window  I  have  my  table — a  table  with  a 
thoroughly  settled  disposition,  and  big  enough  to  give 
me  a  row  of  books  across  the  back.  The  books  will  have 
to  stay  abed  until  Sarah  is  through  with  the  hammer. 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  13 

Three  boxes  of  them.  Aunt  folded  her  arms  when  the 
expressman  lugged  them  in  this  morning.  But  what 
could  I  do  without  my  treasures? 

The  table  has  a  drawer  in  which  I  can  keep  notes,  and 
manuscript  of  the  Book. 

The  Book!  Will  it  be  born  in  this  gully  of  the  town? 
Is  the  answer  here  in  the  seethe  of  things?  "THE  GREAT 
DESIRE."  The  title  is  there  on  the  top  of  the  sheet. 
It  throbs,  throbs  .  .  .  like  Sarah's  hammer. 

Sarah  may  be  one  answer.  She  is  an  incarnate  Wish. 
Yet  I'm  sure  she  doesn't  know  what  she  wants.  How 
much  more  definitely  have  I  known  what  I  want,  there  or 
here,  except  that  I  have  wanted  to  make  that  book, 
and  to  make  that  book  an  honest  Answer? 

No  wonder  the  Father  man,  when  I  left  him  in  the 
little  valley,  looked  a  question  he  didn't  ask,  and  that 
the  heart  of  Woman,  peering  at  me  through  the  eyes 
that  colored  mine,  should  signal  its  eternal  Why!  To 
go  forth  for  to  seek — it  is  in  the  blood,  to  be  sure,  but 
is  not  less  cruel,  maybe,  on  that  account. 

I  have  no  doubt  we  were  eloquejit  in  our  way.  There 
had  to  be  persuasion,  since  I  could  have  been  checked 
by  a  shrug,  for  a  time  at  least,  and  Sarah  was  even  more 
in  need  of  a  good  wish  for  her  adventure.  You  might 
say  that  there  had  been  a  campaign,  beginning  (on  my 
part)  a  year  or  more  ago,  when  the  youngsters  were 
flocking  back  to  the  Academy  and  I  fancied  before  me 
the  grind  of  the  school  wheels  for  another  winter.  I 
suppose  that  every  teacher  has  had  the  feeling,  no 
matter  how  reverently  he  may  stand  before  the  altar 
of  Education,  no  matter  how  proud  he  may  be  of  his 
calling. 

"Calling!"  Isn't  there  always  the  larger  "call" 
that  must,  perhaps,  sometimes  be  denied,  but  that  rings 
down  the  wind,  nevertheless,  stirring  the  fibers  of  the 
soul? 

'Yes,  I  am  answering  a  call,  a  note  as  insistent  as  a 


14  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

star,  a  splendid,  obsessing  summons,  and  I  am  answer 
ing  it  in  the  only  way  I  know. 

I  shall  look  the  world  in  the  eyes  and  ask  of  it,  What 
do  you  want? 

I  shall  challenge  Life  to  answer  me,  What  are  your 
peace  terms?  I  shall  make  it  tell  me  what  it  is  fight 
ing  for,  make  it  reveal  to  me  the  mastering  hunger  that 
must  somehow  explain  the  paroxysms  of  history.  I 
shall  lay  bare  the  Great  Desire.  .  .  . 

I  shall  not  ask  Life  to  look  at  my  back  and  answer 
me  that. 

Only  God,  the  Final  Explainer,  ever  can  solve  the 
riddle  of  my  shadow.  Poor  old  Proff  Eckering,  with  his 
wistful  look  from  under  the  brow-bristles,  telling  me 
that  my  hump  was  "a  dissonance"  to  be  merged  at  last 
into  the  "eternal  harmony"!  I  think  of  this  sometimes, 
Eckering.  If  you  are  a  hovering  spirit  maybe  you  are 
getting  some  satisfaction  from  that  fact.  Of  course  it 
is  a  small  matter.  Any  one  man's  chains  are  a  small 
matter  .  .  .  but  small  things  can  be  poignant,  Eckering. 
Have  you  found  out  that  on  the  Other  Side? 


A  note:  I  see  that  I  have  said  that  all  the  curtains 
were  drawn  in  the  windows  across  the  way.  There  is 
an  exception.  In  a  house  almost  directly  opposite  there 
is  one  frank  window.  The  clear  look  of  it  makes  one 
understand  the  appropriateness  of  the  term  "blinds.'* 
One  should,  I  suppose,  discriminate  between  a  shade, 
which  may  drop  like  an  eyelid,  and  curtains,  which 
are  a  form  of  veil.  Anyway,  this  candidly  out-looking 
window  is  a  relief,  even  a  kind  of  inspiration. 

For  this  window  sometimes  frames  a  face.  A  girl 
sits  there  a  good  deal.  Frequently  she  is  knitting — per 
haps  for  the  soldiers  in  France.  She  is  knitting  just 
now.  . 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  15 

Quaint  is  the  word,  I  should  say,  for  the  way  this 
girl  looks.  There  is  something  almost  Leonardo-like  in 
the  flow  of  her  hair,  and  this  surely  is  a  novelty  in  a 
time  of  fantastic  coiffures.  Yet  there  is  something  en 
tirely  modern  in  the  poise  of  her  head,  in  her  way  of 
looking  out.  .  .  . 

She  went  riding  to-day  in  a  rather  trim  car.  Evident 
ly  she  is  an  invalid,  or  a  convalescent,  for  the  elderly 
woman  who  sometimes  sits  near  her  at  the  window,  and 
who  has  a  pretty  way  of  putting  her  face  down  beside 
hers  from  behind  the  chair,  held  her  arm  as  they  came 
down  the  steps.  When  she  turned  a  laughing  face  just 
before  entering  the  car  I  had  an  absurd  notion  that 
she  had  seen  me  watching.  .  .  . 


VI  £ 

My  aunt  has  more  than  a  quizzical  interest  in  the  ad 
venture  upon  which  Sarah  and  I  have  entered.  I  can 
feel  that  without  haste  or  intrusion  she  yet  is  set  upon 
satisfying  a  curiosity  not  merely  as  to  what  we  intend 
to  do,  but  as  to  why  and  how  we  have  been  impelled. 

She  herself  is  so  beautifully  settled  that  her  study 
of  us,  as  of  everything  else,  must  have  strategic  advan 
tages.  My  own  case,  I  fancy,  seems  to  her  somewhat 
simpler  than  Sarah's.  Another  book  is  no  great  matter 
in  a  print-bestrewn  world,  and  a  man  fanatically  ab 
sorbed  by  this  form  of  gestation  needn't  be  so  great  a 
problem.  Sarah  is  another  matter.  Although  she  is  so 
often  a  hurrier,  she  can't  be  hurried.  You  may  watch 
her  compress  herself  into  a  room,  and  hear  her  wonder 
how  she  shall  compress  herself  into  New  York,  but  it 
would  be  foolish  to  attempt  to  pin  her  down  to  any 
program  or  to  try  to  elicit  any  statement  of  intentions. 
She  always  seems  so  eager  to  be  sure  that  she  shall  be 
free  to  change  her  mind,  especially  to  be  sure  that  she 
can  do  the  thing,  whatever  it  may  be,  herself,  that 


16  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

pinning  her  down  is  precisely  what  one  may  not  do  with 
her. 

One  may  do  a  little  figuring  on  the  basis  of  her  repudia 
tions.  She  doesn't  want  to  be  a  singer  or  a  player,  to 
exhibit  at  the  Academy,  to  act  Ophelia,  to  study  medi 
cine  or  dazzle  the  Bar.  She  doesn't  seem  to  want  to 
send  home  newspaper  clippings  showing  that  she  has 
poured  tea.  She  has  a  passionate  curiosity  as  to  these 
things — as  to  all  things  that  spell  To-day  for  her — yet 
she  has  an  odd  sort  of  sophistication  for  a  village  girl. 
If  any  one  contrives  to  fool  Sarah  it  will  be  in  a  new 
way. 

Nevertheless,  she  has  certain  detailed  intentions. 
For  example,  she  is  to  see  Aunt  Portia  Rowning,  who,  in 
our  family,  expresses  the  notion  of  Personage.  Aunt 
Portia  is  a  Dame,  and  a  Daughter,  and  a  tremendous 
Federation  figure.  Since  the  war  began  she  has  become 
all  sorts  of  other  things  of  which  I  have  only  a  vague 
impression.  She  has  been  to  Washington  to  see  the 
President  and  a  lot  of  other  people.  If  we  get  into  this 
war  ourselves,  she  will  have  a  hand  in  running  it,  or 
make  somebody  very  uncomfortable. 

I  can  fancy  how  Aunt  Portia  will  stare  when  she  finds 
that  Sarah  intends  to  work.  Of  course  women  are  doing 
all  sorts  of  things  nowadays,  and  Portia  Masterson  Rown 
ing  knows  of  them  all — I  mean  all  of  these  freak  things. 
But  when  one's  own  niece,  housed  by  one's  own  sister- 
in-law,  betrays  her  ideas  about  honest  labor,  the  thing 
can't  help  seeming  different.  The  trick  might  be  to 
prove  to  Sarah  that  even  manual  work  in  itself  is  no 
longer  an  adventure.  I  couldn't  prove  it,  except  in 
print.  Aunt  Portia  may  hit  upon  a  more  conclusive 
method.  Anyway,  this  will  be  a  momentous  meeting. 

Then  there  is  a  Socialist  man  whom  she  is  set  upon 
seeing;  also,  perhaps  inevitably,  labor-union  people, 
including  the  I.  W.  W.  chap  of  whom  Chadrick  talked  to 
us  so  fervently.  She  will  wish,  I  am  sure,  to  find  some 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  17 

one  who  will  tell  her  all  about  Wall  Street — in  a  quick 
way,  and  some  one  else  who  will  explain  airplanes  and 
how  submarines  submerge. 

I  think  the  oddest  name  on  Sarah's  unwritten  list  of 
People  I  Shall  Meet  is  that  of  a  policeman — I've  for 
gotten  the  name — who  did  something  that  appealed  to 
her  imagination.  I  warned  her  that  she  had  better  leave 
well  enough  alone,  that  Mr.  Policeman  as  a  "close  up" 
might  be  disenchanting,  and  so  on,  and  ended  by  wish 
ing  that  I  might  see  him  myself — which  was  discon 
certing. 

By  the  way,  there  is  one  man  with  whom  Sarah  may 
scarcely  hope  to  escape  a  meeting.  Making  every  al 
lowance  for  the  boasted  aloofness  of  a  city  cage — I 
have  heard  of  one  tenant  who  lived  sixteen  years  in  an 
apartment  without  meeting  his  next-floor  neighbors, 
and  who  mentioned  the  fact  in  proud  vindication  of  the 
system — we  are  likely  to  meet  Rudley  at  any  moment. 

I've  been  trying  to  recall  the  story  about  him.  There 
was  something  ugly  in  the  thing.  It  seems  to  be  summed 
up  somehow  in  the  word  "gambler."  An  obscure  word. 
Isn't  it  astonishing  how  a  word  like  that  will  not  only 
have  a  color  quite  different  from  the  color  of  any  other 
word,  but  how  it  will  color  its  wearer?  Take  the  word 
"foreigner."  It  quite  saturates  the  figure  it  labels — 
and  disfigures  it  also,  incidentally.  That  is  one  of  the 
reasons  why  we  have  wars.  When  one  says  "the  mur 
derer,"  one  doesn't  image  a  man  like  other  men  save 
for  a  single  act  of  passion,  but  sees  a  kind  of  man 
structurally  and  spiritually  different  from  others  and 
smeared  with  the  horrible  stains  of  crime.  It  is  in  the 
same  way  that  we  are  affected  by  designations  like 
"striker,"  or  "floorwalker,"  or  "chorus  girl";  or  carry 
an  artificial  attitude  under  the  spell  of  innocent  names 
like  "juror"  or  "pastor"  or  "poet."  There  is  no 
escaping  the  coloration.  I  suppose  that  is  what  made 
the  word  the  weapon,  why  we  look  out  upon  life  through 


18  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

bars  of  words,  why  we  trim  and  shuffle  to  escape  skulk 
ing  words,  words  lying  in  wait  to  devour  our  peace.  Men 
are  thrown  into  frightful  convulsions  by  a  hurled  syllable. 
A  word  can  drown  a  woman  .  .  .  push  her  under. 

Would  a  gambler  hate  to  be  called  a  gambler?  Very 
likely  his  sensibility  would  be  as  to  some  other  word 
altogether.  I  suppose  every  man  has  his  word — his 
word  that  hurts. 

How  Sarah  feels  about  this  obvious  probability  of 
meeting  Rudley  I  can't  guess.  I  shall  anticipate  nothing. 
There  can  be  no  wisdom  in  telling  her  about  the  gambler 
story.  The  truth  is  that  anything  next  door  is  too  far 
away  to  be  considered  just  now.  She  wants  to  see  the 
world.  I've  told  her  that  I  don't  know  where  that  is. 
But  she  says  we  shall  start  foolishly  with  Broadway, 
and  become  more  serious  as  we  go  on.  To-night 
being  the  first  possible  night,  she  has  chosen  that.  As 
between  two  privileges  Sarah  always  would  choose  the 
soonest. 

VII 

There  were  many  reasons  why  I  should  have  preferred 
to  go  alone  into  that  first  scuffle  with  Broadway.  I  sup 
pose  that  in  that  other  case  I  should  have  contrived  to 
do  it  tentatively,  to  have  nibbled  at  it,  to  have  taken 
it  with  an  oblique  caution,  as  boys  slip  into  a  side  seat 
in  a  lecture-room.  .  .  . 

With  Sarah,  getting  acquainted  is  a  straightforward 
matter,  and  this  was  her  affair.  She  looks  a  city  or  a 
man  squarely  in  the  face.  Heaven  knows  I  admire  this 
quality,  this  faculty  for  unabashed  encounter.  And  no 
man  could  walk  beside  Sarah  without  pride.  All  the 
same,  one  must  play  his  own  cards. 

In  the  beginning  she  was  for  clutching  my  arm  through 
the  tangles  of  traffic.  In  the  end  I  was  dragging  her 
back.  She  has  no  sense  of  caution — not  even  a  primal 
animal  prudence. 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  19 

She  cited  some  person  as  saying  that  one  has  to  be 
either  cautious  or  dexterous,  that  one  doesn't  need  to 
be  both.  I  told  her  that  this  was  the  philosophy  of 
crooks.  Nevertheless,  it  is  true  that  Sarah  is  dexterous, 
amazingly  so.  (I  have  no  doubt  that  her  agility  is 
feminine,  and  that  because  women  are  mentally  so 
nimble,  they  don't  really  need  to  be  profound.) 

Yet  seeing  with  Sarah  even  so  trite  a  matter  as  Broad 
way  had  its  own  picturesqueness,  its  own  excitement. 
I  suppose  that  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  there  is  a  Broad 
way — maybe  the  chief  reason. 

We  walked  up  from  the  older  streets  to  the  slightly 
younger,  after  my  aunt's  hastened  dinner,  with  a  view 
to  one  of  the  "big  movies"  upon  which  Sarah  had  fixed 
her  intentions.  It  was  of  no  avail  to  urge  that  we  could 
see  movies  anywhere. 

"You  know,"  she  said,  "if  we  go  to  an  early  show 
we  shall  have  lots  of  time  afterward." 

We  found  the  selected  place  in  the  center  of  the 
greatest  turmoil  and  amid  the  most  epileptic  lights — 
a  gorgeous  arena  for  the  new  art,  where  for  two 
hours  we  saw  news  set  to  music,  science  dramatized, 
and  drama  staged  in  sunshine.  There  was,  too,  a 
man  who  talked  about  the  war  while  things  happened 
on  the  screen,  and  a  woman  who  sang  in  a  spotlight. 
When  we  came  out  another  audience  was  waiting, 
solidly  massed,  in  the  lobby;  and  Broadway  seemed 
even  fuller  and  noisier  and  more  garish  than  when 
we  entered. 

The  difficulty  of  transit  with  Sarah  rather  grew  as 
we  moved  northward  a  bit.  To  lead  the  way  in  a  tight 
place  is  not  to  be  sure  that  Sarah  will  like  the  same 
channel,  and  peering  about  for  one's  companion  is 
humiliating.  To  let  Sarah  lead  in  a  pinched  path  is  a 
no  more  cheerful  matter.  She  slips  through  like  a  sleek 
game-dog  in  the  underbrush.  One  has  a  task  finding 
her  again.  Moreover,  she  has  no  sense  of  destination. 


20  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

She  is  ready  to  make  anything  an  occasion  for  a  pause, 
even  for  prolonged  study. 

Thus  she  startled  me  by  halting  before  a  glittering, 
chromatic  window  and  announcing,  "I  should  like  to 
go  in  there." 

"It  is  a  bar,"  I  said. 

"I  know.     I'm  not  going  in.     But  I  should  like  to 

go." 

"Would  you  mind  telling  me  why?"  I  asked. 

"It  looks  so  interesting." 

"Do  you  mean  that  it  looks  wicked?" 

"Oh  no!  It  doesn't  look  at  all  wicked.  It  just  looks 
tremendously  cheerful  and  amusing." 

"That  is  art,"  I  said,  content  to  leave  the  matter 
there  and  to  move  Sarah. 

But  I  was  merely  advancing  into  further  complica 
tions,  for  Sarah  thought  it  would  be  a  thrilling  adventure 
to  have  something  to  eat  in  a  place  where  there  was 
music. ,  I  could  see  that  she  was  illuminated  by  the 
glow  of  the  idea.  She  plucked  at  my  arm  and  added  an 
expectant  swing  to  her  step. 

"This  first  time  will  happen  only  once,"  she  said. 
"It's  a  celebration." 

I  was  benumbed  by  the  suggestion.  One  needs  an 
education  in  the  mechanics  of  such  things.  And  I  could 
feel,  from  the  first  instant,  that  Sarah  would  choose  the 
place.  I  should  be  swept  along.  .  .  . 

Probably  the  noise  was  the  deciding  factor.  A  gust 
of  syncopated  sound  struck  sharply  across  the  area  of 
syncopated  lights  .  .  .  and  Sarah  was  saying: 

"This  is  Bickley's.    Seems  to  me  I  have  heard  of  it." 

One  could  not  feel  the  glare  of  Bickley's  nor  stagger 
under  the  gust  of  its  voice  without  feeling  that  it  would, 
inevitably,  elicit  some  attention.  By  way  of  being  heard 
of,  nothing  appeared  to  have  been  overlooked. 

And  so,  like  babes  in  the  wood,  we  made  our  way. 

A  man  who  looked  like  Napoleon  and  walked  like  St. 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  21 

Vitus  preferred  to  put  us  in  the  storm  center.  Every 
thing  flashed  and  quivered.  There  was  an  incessant 
hubbub.  A  painted  girl  who  began  to  sing  as  we  came 
in  had  to  scream  raucously  to  make  herself  heard — that 
is,  to  make  herself  the  most  heard — and  she  had  been 
let  loose  among  the  tables. 

Meanwhile  the  waiter,  a  flabby  man,  with  a  face  that 
seemed  to  have  been  seared  by  revolting  experiences, 
after  eying  me  and  transparently  pitying  Sarah,  was 
offering  us  the  bill  of  fare — a  frightful  broadside  that 
completed  my  loss  of  appetite. 

As  I  might  have  expected,  the  effect  upon  Sarah  was 
quite  different.  She  said  she  thought  she  would  have 
lobster.  If  that  broiled  waiter  hadn't  stood  there  I 
might  have  said  certain  things  to  Sarah;  yelled  them,  I 
mean,  for  the  girl  with  the  vermilion  lips  was  in  the 
worst  part  of  her  song. 

I  believe  that  Sarah  had  it  all  thought  out.  I  could 
see  it  shining  in  her  face  when  she  leaned  forward. 
"  This  is  a  lobster  palace,  isn't  it?  Then  I  want  lobster." 

There  was  a  kind  of  logic  in  it.  I  couldn't  combat 
the  lobster  logic  with  the  uproar  in  my  ears  and  the 
waiter  garroting  me  with  his  eyes. 

Thus  we  had  lobster,  a  vast  red  mound,  the  ultimate 
challenge  to  unnecessary  eating.  I  presume  it  was  all 
there,  antennules,  cephalothorax,  rostrum — every  pro- 
topodial  fragment.  It  was  staggering. 

But  it  was  delicious.  I  suppose  it  is  that  way  with 
the  most  highly  colored  vices.  The  momentary  taste 
dopes  the  conscience. 

I  was  aware  of  the  waiter's  annoyance  that  I  hadn't 
ordered  drink.  No  one  else  in  sight  had  overlooked  this 
feature  of  the  formula. 

Just  behind  Sarah,  from  over  the  shoulders  of  a  bald 
man  with  a  crimson  neck,  a  girl  stared  at  me  curiously 
and  frankly.  There  was  nothing  furtive  about  the 
place.  Every  creature  there  stared  quite  candidly  at 

3 


22  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

every  other  creature.  Sarah  readily  adjusted  herself  to 
this  privilege.  Plainly  it  was  the  women  who  excited 
her  interest.  There  were  some  astonishing  clothes,  an 
amazing  reiteration  of  bare  shoulders.  Particularly 
there  were  astonishing  hats,  hats  not  only  fantastic 
in  themselves,  but  fantastic  in  their  relation  to  the  heads 
that  carried  them.  (Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  called  the 
hat  "the  vulnerable  point  of  the  artificial  integument." 
Evidently  women  have  an  instinct  for  being  certain  of 
pictorial  strength  in  the  hat.  Like  the  male  Mexicans, 
they  are  almost  willing  to  regard  the  rest  as  negligible.) 

Anyway,  Sarah  and  I  stared  and  ate  lobster.  I  con 
fess  to  eating  in  a  stupor  induced  by  the  fearful  sudden 
ness  of  the  whole  incident,  by  the  blare  of  the  sound, 
by  the  feverish  glitter,  by  a  sense  of  the  encroaching 
nakedness  of  life. 

The  whole  scene  spelled  sensation,  the  truckling  to 
sense  appetites.  Color  swam  in  an  atmosphere  that 
reeked  with  food  odors,  smoke,  and  perfumes.  A  par 
ticularly  strident  sister  of  musk  advertised  a  woman 
somewhere  behind  me.  I  saw  Sarah's  eyes  widen  at 
the  spectacle  of  a  girl,  a  mere  child,  you  would  say, 
lighting  a  cigarette.  I  suspect  that  it  was  the  first  time 
Sarah  had  seen  such  a  thing.  Her  fork  paused  for  some 
moments,  and  I  saw  her  glance  travel  to  the  man  with 
the  girl  as  he  fumbled  in  the  champagne-bucket.  I 
wondered  if  she  noticed  that  his  hand  trembled  as  if 
he  were  in  the  advanced  stage  of  some  nervous  malady. 

All  this  time  I  was  keenly  conscious  of  an  impending 
embarrassment  which  I  couldn't  put  out  of  my  mind. 
The  tip  problem  hovered  like  a  specter.  The  waiter  op 
pressed  me.  He  looked  like  a  sick  bandit,  with  a  habit 
of  disappointment,  who  had  a  deep,  truculent  distaste 
for  all  humanity. 

Hazen,  without  giving  me  any  concrete  working  rule, 
once  outlined  the  waiter  formula,  after  the  event,  and 
consequently  after  the  determining  action.  "What  we 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  23 

shall  call  the  very  lowest  grade  of  tip,"  said  Hazen  (in 
his  oracular  way),  "the  waiter  does  not  touch  at  all  untf 
you  have  risen.  He  is  supposed  to  be  utterly  stunned, 
to  be  speechless  with  horror.  A  little  larger  tip  he  will 
pick  up  with  a  contemptuous  gesture  in  a  silence  you 
are  invited  to  remember  to  your  dying  day.  Yet  a  bit 
larger — we  may  call  this  the  third  grade — still  merits 
silence,  but  justifies  the  omission  of  the  contemptuous 
gesture.  He  merely  picks  it  up,  perhaps  (it  is  a  matter 
of  personal  temperament)  with  an  effect  of  unutterable 
sadness,  of  being  crushed  under  fresh  evidence  of  the 
world's  ineradicable  ungratefulness.  The  fourth  grade, 
in  which  you  outrage  yourself  and  every  principle  of 
economic  integrity,  but  in  which  you  rise,  measurably, 
above  the  horizon  of  his  hopes,  entitles  you  to  a  semi- 
audible  grunt,  which,  when  you  have  worked  for  it,  may 
have  for  you  a  quality  almost  of  music.  And  so  on  to 
where  you  have,  by  a  splendid  stroke,  completely  grati 
fied  his  pirate  greed  and  won  a  loud,  unequivocal  'Thank 
you,  sir!'  with  genuflections  of  abject  and  artistically 
insulting  servility." 

If  it  were  true  that  the  responsive  conduct  of  waiters 
is  standardized,  I  could  hope  to  find  out  the  true  measure 
of  any  given  sum,  but  I  weakly  longed  to  postpone  the 
measurement.  At  least  I  didn't  feel  like  beginning  my 
investigation  at  the  foot  of  the  barometric  scale.  I  left 
a  dollar  on  the  tray  after  gathering  up  my  change,  and 
in  a  daze  of  excitement  struggled  to  hold  my  mind  to 
an  observation  of  the  actual  results.  I  saw  his  paw 
move  forward.  At  the  same  instant  there  was  a  start 
ling  crash  that  blurred  any  effort  to  follow  the  waiter's 
movements  and  engulfed  any  possible  sound  that  might, 
have  come  from  him.  A  woman,  suddenly  rising,  had 
toppled  a  tray  carried  by  one  of  the  scurrying  brigands, 
who  stood  scowling  and  red  on  the  spot  where  he  lost 
his  burden  and  his  dignity. 

So  that  I  learned  nothing  about  my  tip,  excepting. 


24  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

perhaps,  tliat  it  didn't  belong  to  Hazen's  very  lowest 
grade.  Probably  we  all  will  end  by  paying  the  waiter 
and  tipping  the  restaurant. 

Sarah's  first  remark  on  reaching  the  street  was  very 
simple. 

"Wasn't  it  interesting!" 

She  had,  you  see,  remained  completely  detached,  with 
no  sense  of  participation  or  sanction.  The  whole  thing 
was  objective  to  her.  It  may  be  that  here  is  one  secret 
of  the  power  of  a  girl  like  Sarah.  Of  course  there  is  a 
fallacy  behind  it.  We  do  participate  in  all  that  we  see, 
at  least  in  all  that  we  choose  to  see.  Yet  refusing  con 
tagion  belongs  to  power.  We  can't  deny  that,  either. 
I  admitted  that  the  incident  had  its  interest,  even  if 
it  was  rather  disturbing. 

"Oh,  I  could  see  that  you  were  shocked!"  cried 
Sarah. 

"As  for  that,"  I  said,  "I  dare  say  these  things  are 
meant  to  be  shocking.  These  people  are  looking  for 
shocks.  When  certain  shocks  pall  they  invent  some 
thing  else.  Eyes,  ears,  stomachs  all  have  to  be  shocked 
somehow.  Very  hot  or  very  cold,  too  big  or  too  little, 
the  insistent  voice  or  the  insistent  odor,  the  paradox  in 
clothes — all  gnawing  for  notice,  all  challenging  surprise. 
We  are  no  better  than  the  rest.  We  were  looking  for 
a  new  sensation." 

"Thank  you,  Mr.  Philosopher,  for  sharing  the  sin." 

Sarah  never  lets  me  get  away  with  anything,  especially 
with  a  complacency. 

At  the  moment  she  was  giving  herself  to  study  of  the 
street  and  its  kaleidoscopic  crowd,  herself  nickering 
through  it  like  a  freshly  opened  flower,  all  eyes  and  lips, 
eager  to  like,  quickly  responsive  to  everything  she  under 
stood,  without  anxieties  as  to  anything  that  might  be 
sinister — really  not  touched  by  effects  of  that  sort  at 
all,  except  that  she  saw  and  rejected,  as  one  might  a 
page  in  a  language  one  didn't  understand — and  all  the 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  25 

time,  I  am  sure,  wondering  at  the  complexity  and  same 
ness  that  belong  to  every  crowd. 

"But  I  know  you  did  like  the  lobster." 

This  she  tossed  over  to  me  as  of  something  unfinished. 

I  did  like  it,  though  I  should  have  liked  it  better — 
liked  it  comfortably — but  for  a  nasty  thought  about 
hungry  millions  in  Europe,  and  a  worse  twinge  of  dis 
gust  at  the  abominable  hypocrisy  of  that  kind  of  sym 
pathy.  And  but  for  the  waiter,  and  the  man  who  made 
the  wooden  noises  in  the  orchestra,  and  a  certain  repul 
sive  blonde  with  three  chins  who  had  a  Pom  dog  in  the 
hollow  of  a  muff  in  her  lap  .  .  . 

I  began  to  say  this,  but  Sarah  was  now  far  away  from 
the  lobster. 

The  thought  of  fat  women  somehow  survived  the  re 
buff.  There  are  so  many  of  them  on  Broadway,  partic 
ularly  on  wheels  .  .  .  lolling,  and  getting  fatter.  One 
has  the  feeling  that  but  for  fat  women  one  wouldn't 
have  to  wait  so  long  at  crossings  for  noisy  and  smelly 
machinery  to  get  out  of  the  way. 

There  was  a  lot  of  this  waiting  to  be  done  during  the 
whole  of  our  expedition.  It  was  as  much  a  wait  as  a 
walk,  and  it  is  impossible  not  to  marvel  at  the  good- 
natured  patience  with  which  the  submerged  nine-tenths 
of  the  population  bears  the  pressure  of  the  machine- 
carried  tenth.  This  is  what  one  thinks  on  his  feet.  In 
an  automobile  one  instantly  forgets  that  the  effective 
displacement  of  the  one  machine  used  to  carry  him 
around  is  equivalent  to  that  of  twenty  walkers.  This 
is  fortunate,  of  course.  Otherwise  Progress  would  stop 
in  its  tracks.  .  .  .  Some  day  I  shall  buy  a  very  soft- 
cushioned  car. 

In  the  side-streets,  orators,  standing  on  boxes  and 
holding  their  audiences  with  anything  you  may  choose 
to  imagine — suffrage,  enlisting  in  Europe's  work,  Social 
ism,  money  theories,  municipal  reform.  One  woman, 
with  a  shrill,  plaintive,  wonderfully  penetrating  voice, 


26  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

was  talking  about  Isaiah.  This  much  I  caught  in  the 
moment  of  our  eddying  near  the  corner,  and  with  it 
a  sense  of  a  vibrant  and  passionate  earnestness. 

Each  audience  seemed  like  every  other  in  being  abso 
lutely  passive.  These  figures  of  the  night  might  just 
as  well  have  been  so  many  stage  properties  placed  in 
appropriate  groups.  They  drifted  out  of  some  stream 
and  listened,  or  they  turned  away,  sometimes  suddenly 
as  if  they  had  just  bethought  themselves  of  an  obliga 
tion.  But  while  they  stood  they  gave  no  sign.  .  .  .  Yes, 
there  was  sometimes  a  rumble  of  light  laughter.  Yet 
no  disposition,  as  one  might  say,  to  give  any  help  or 
answer.  Each  preacher  was  left  to  seem  as  if  preaching 
for  his  own  soul's  satisfaction,  to  get  the  thing  said,  to 
fling,  hoarsely  or  in  a  kind  of  broken  desperateness  of 
conviction,  the  foam  of  his  message  on  the  shore  of 
these  faces. 

More  crossings.  More  paired  people,  and  swishing 
clothes,  and  laughter,  and  odd  figures  hurrying  or 
shambling  alone.  .  .  . 

There  was  one  creature  whom  we  both  saw  at  the  same 
moment.  I  caught  Sarah's  little  interrogating  turn  of 
the  head.  The  girl  was  immensely  saddening.  Super 
ficially  I  suppose  she  actually  was  beautiful,  but  to  be 
attracted  by  her  a  man  would  need  to  be  very  young, 
very  old,  or  very  drunk.  .  .  . 

Sarah  touched  my  arm. 

"Shall  you  explain  her  in  the  book?" 

"Useless  to  try,"  I  said.  "They've  been  explaining 
her  for  ten  thousand  years.  She's  older  than  money. 
She's  the  Second  Cause  elaborated." 

"I  see,"  said  Sarah.     "You've  already  written  it." 

It  was  just  here  that  we  were  halted  by  an  unexplained 
congestion,  originating  in  a  side-street. 

"Something  is  happening!"  cried  Sarah. 

We  were  swept  for  a  distance  into  the  dimmer  cavern 
by  a  rush  of  curious  men  and  women.  I  could  hear  the 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  27 

thud  of  blows,  as  of  a  sledge.  It  turned  out  to  be  an  ax. 
I  could  see  it  swinging  at  a  doorway.  Then  a  murmur 
went  up. 

"It's  a  raid!" 

"Come!"  I  called  to  Sarah,  and  grasped  her  insistently. 

"No,  no!"  she  rebelled.  "I  want  to  see.  Surely 
you  .  .  ." 

Yes,  I  knew  what  she  was  thinking.  I  had  come  to 
see  men  in  the  mass.  I  ought  not  to  shrink.  ...  It  was 
hardly  debatable  by  this  time.  We  were  under  pressure. 
I  could  see  nothing.  So  much  for  being  four  feet  three. 
A  woman's  elbow  drove  into  my  neck.  A  mob  is  merely 
a  matter  of  arithmetic.  Multiply  the  thoughtless  and 
you  have  the  brutal. 

The  ax  had  stopped.  I  was  able  to  understand  that 
police  had  stumbled  past  the  demolished  barriers.  The 
crowd  was  expectantly  eager,  as  at  a  play.  There  were 
remarks,  as  if  from  those  who  knew,  ascribing  a  patrol- 
wagon.  There  would  be  prisoners.  Women  or  men? 
Or  both?  Opinions  differed. 

"Do  they  take  them  all?"  asked  a  woman. 

"Sure,"  was  the  answer. 

One  of  the  authoritative  voices  said:  "No.  Only 
the  gang  that  runs  it.  They  know  who  they  want. 
O'Hara'll  get  'em." 

There  was  a  strained  pause,  in  which  the  crowd  grew. 
At  a  certain  murmur  I  knew  that  the  prisoners  were 
coming  out.  Also,  as  it  transpired,  they  that  were  not 
prisoners.  The  crowd  shifted  as  if  to  make  way  for  the 
loosed.  They  came  by,  some  of  them  hurriedly,  others 
shrinking  into  the  interstices  of  the  gathering.  Two 
silk-hatted  men  in  conspicuous  overcoats  were  quite 
evidently  looking  for  a  chauffeur  and  a  car  that  should 
have  been  waiting. 

And  then  came  Rudley,  sauntering,  with  a  cigarette, 
his  face  up  ...  smiling,  I  thought,  though  not  pleas 
antly. 


28  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

He  all  but  touched  Sarah  as  he  moved  past.  Her 
face,  when  she  saw  who  it  was,  actually  had  a  frightened 
look. 

VIII 

My  aunt  has  a  happy  way  of  accepting  vicarious  ex 
pressions  of  life,  an  effect  of  being  content,  not  only  to 
escape  the  COD  tact — she  isn't  at  all  smug  about  it — but 
to  find  the  translation  interesting  in  itself.  She  lights 
up  to  a  narrative;  she  takes  the  thing  that  comes,  and 
is  under  no  wear  and  tear  by  reason  of  anything  she 
doesn't  get.  She  has  one  of  those  accepting  and  appre 
ciative  table  d'kdte  minds  that  enjoy  freedom  from  the 
obligation  to  pursue  or  select,  that  are  in  no  hurry  to 
reach  something  they  won't  like,  and  that  have,  con 
sequently,  a  lot  of  saved  energy  with  which  to  wander 
into  the  comfortable  situation. 

No  doubt  it  takes  years  to  produce  this  effect  in  its 
completeness.  You  may  be  sure  that  Pauline  Rowning 
is  an  attainment.  She  wasn't  always  fat  and  fifty. 
She  has  traveled  everywhere,  even  if  at  this  moment 
she  doesn't  suggest  transit.  She  is  as  likely  to  have  a 
good  story  about  Bombay  as  about  Bass  Rocks.  I 
can  remember  her  telling  about  some  place  where  there 
was  a  revolution  and  people  were  firing  with  rifles  both 
up  and  down  a  street.  It  seems  that  she  flattened  into 
a  doorway,  standing  rigid  for  half  an  hour.  One  needed 
youth  and  a  different  figure  for  that.  And  there  was 
another  time  on  a  ship  that  had  bumped  something  near 
Alexandria,  and  was  supposed  to  be  sinking.  She 
picked  up  a  Malay  brute  and  threw  him  down  a  flight 
of  steps.  It  must  have  been  a  beautiful  sight. 

Thus  when  Sarah  and  I  (at  breakfast)  unrolled  our 
panorama  Aunt  Paul  was  a  good  audience.  The  wrinkle 
hovering  near  her  alert  brown  eyes  was  on  the  job. 
Sarah,  though  full  of  the  subject,  seemed  to  contrive,  for 
reasons  of  her  own,  to  make  me  the  narrator. 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  29 

In  the  cool  of  the  morning  this  was  not  inspiring.  I 
hate  to  expound  an  inevitable  narrative.  The  experience 
came  back  vividly  enough,  yet  it  all  seemed  rather 
juvenile.  .  .  .  All  but  the  affair  of  the  raid.  This  had 
the  measure  of  a  real  happening.  I  still  smarted  from 
the  crowd.  Above  all,  the  picture  of  Rudley  had  burned 
its  way  in.  ... 

Sarah  told  me  in  the  walk  home  that  she  had  heard  the 
words  "gambling-house."  They  meant  nothing  to  her 
in  themselves.  Rudley  gave  them  an  interest.  I  ad 
mitted  having  heard  Rudley  spoken  of  as  a  gambler. 
I  knew  nothing  more,  save  that  something  related  to 
gambling,  whatever  it  might  be,  had  made  a  scandal; 
that  he  was  supposed  to  be  smashed.  Inevitably  Sarah 
wanted  to  know:  What  sort  of  gambling?  What  did 
they  do  in  a  gambling-house?  Did  I  mean  that  gam 
bling  was  Rudley 's  business?  And  a  lot  more.  I 
couldn't  be  very  informative.  It  was  interesting  to  look 
into  my  own  mind  for  its  indistinct  images,  images  of 
gamblers  as  I  fancied  them,  and  of  "hells"  where  men 
gambled.  I  found  that  there  was  a  notion  (as  to  the 
places)  of  machinery,  dark,  sinister  machinery,  and  very 
bright,  alluring  machinery  also,  presided  over  by  greedy- 
looking  men — men  to  be  suspected  of  carrying  weapons 
under  their  broadcloth.  There  was  absolutely  nothing 
I  could  explain  to  Sarah.  The  raid  was  no  illumination, 
save  of  public  joy  in  a  disaster.  .  .  .  Yes,  it  flung  a  light 
on  Rudley,  a  sickish  light,  in  which  he  looked  stained, 
outlawed.  And  yet,  with  his  face  turned  up  in  that 
way,  the  jaw  of  him  set,  and  the  lips  smiling  .  .  . 

"If  I  were  you,"  said  my  aunt,  tranquilly,  "I  shouldn't 
let  the  sins  of  this  town  become  too  absorbing.  The 
fact  that  this  Rudley  fellow  lives  so  near  needn't  put 
him  on  your  conscience." 

She  had  listened  closely  to  the  tale,  with  a  little 
grimace  at  my  picture  of  the  crowd,  as  if  sensing  my 
known  horror  of  entanglements  like  that,  and  maybe, 


30  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

despite  her  absolute  lack  of  solicitude  about  Sarah  in 
any  situation,  with  some  resentment  of  the  actual  con 
tact  in  her  case  also. 

She  brushed  the  affair  aside. 

"And  so  you  have  had  your  bit  of  a  plunge  into  night 
life,  just  like  two  real  nice  natural  children.  It's  off 
your  minds." 

I  had  only  to  glance  at  Sarah  to  see  that  she  had  not 
shed  the  effects  of  the  night  before;  that  the  crisis  of 
the  little  adventure  was  by  no  means  off  her  mind. 
My  own  mind  remained  full  of  it,  and  of  Rudley,  mostly, 
I  suppose,  because  of  his  being  next  door.  The  city- 
bred,  I  have  no  doubt,  become  accustomed  to  that  sort 
of  thing — to  indifference  about  next  door.  It  must 
become  necessary.  .  .  .  There  are  so  many  next  doors. 
One  doubtless  learns  to  stop  surmising. 

Almost  any  sort  of  person  or  any  sort  of  situation  one 
could  think  of  might  be  next  door,  or  up-stairs  or  down 
stairs.  No  wonder  so  many  idealists  object  to  cities. 
They  must  feel  that  the  individual  isn't  watched  enough. 
Yes,  it  makes  tremendously  for  personal  liberty.  I  can 
see  that.  A  man  can  be  his  own  man.  He  can  pick 
and  choose  as  to  companions,  as  to  everything.  He 
doesn't  have  to  come  to  terms  with  one  parson,  one  store 
keeper,  one  neighbor.  He  doesn't  stand  out  so  clearly, 
physically  or  spiritually,  as  in  the  country.  Maybe  on 
that  account  he  isn't  hated  or  loved  so  definitely  as  he 
would  be  in  the  country.  Isn't  there  a  good  chance  that 
individuality  would  go  to  seed  here?  And  is  it  the  en 
forced  terms  of  the  country  that  breed  so  large  a  per 
centage  of  the  most  successful  politicians?  .  .  . 

I  don't  know  what  Sarah  thought  during  the  day, 
while  we  both  were  off  on  errands  of  our  own,  but  there 
was  an  eloquent  incident  in  the  evening  while  we  sat 
with  Aunt  Paul  in  the  living-room  after  dinner,  all  three 
of  us  reading  and  silent.  There  came  a  low,  humming 
sound  through  the  wall,  a  sound  I  can't  describe,  because 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  31 

it  was  so  low  in  volume  as  to  be  almost  as  much  a  feeling 
as  a  sound.  Yet  it  contrived  to  penetrate  the  wall,  as 
the  deepest  tones  of  the  piano  may. 

Without  looking  up  from  her  page  Sarah  asked,  with 
an  absolutely  startling  simplicity,  "Do  they  use  machin 
ery  in  gambling?" 

My  aunt  laughed,  then  paused  for  a  second  or  two 
before  answering. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "of  course.  Principally  there  is  the 
roulette- wheel."  She  laughed  again.  "But  I  assure 
you  you  are  not  hearing  that.  It  isn't  a  noisy  thing." 

Nevertheless,  we  all  listened  intently  once  more.  The 
sound  suddenly  ceased. 

"I  once  saw  a  roulette- wheel,"  I  said,  "where  there 
shouldn't  have  been  one  to  see.  If  it  could  have  been 
heard  through  a  wall  it  wouldn't  have  been  there." 

"Did  you  gamble?"  asked  Sarah,  quite  colorlessly. 

I  said  that  I  had  contented  myself  with  the  trans 
gression  of  looking  on. 

"As  for  that,"  remarked  Aunt  Paul,  "I  watched  for 
a  whole  afternoon  at  Monte  Carlo  and  again  in  Shanghai. 
And  lost  a  good  sovereign  in  both  places." 

"To  see  the  folly  of  it  for  yourself,"  I  suggested. 

"To  get  the  thrill." 

Aunt  Paul,  her  chin  on  her  plump  hand,  acquired  a 
reminiscent  look.  "It  makes  a  big  difference  where 
you  do  a  thing,  doesn't  it?" 

I  ventured  to  suggest,  in  all  respect,  that  I  often  felt 
like  saying  that  to  the  parrot.  In  the  jungles  of  Mada 
gascar,  where  it  belonged,  such  a  scream  .  .  . 

"Your  nerves  will  steady  down  after  a  while,"  said 
my  aunt,  "and  you  will  think  better  and  write  better. 
Both  of  you  are  still  jumpy  .  .  .  hearing  roulette-wheels 
through  the  wall.  This  is  what  comes  of  lobster  and 
night-owling." 

Yet  I  had  an  odd  feeling  of  certainty  that  when  Aunt 
Paul  sought  her  maiden  couch  it  was  with  a  greater 


32  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

degree  of  participation  in  our  curiosity  than  she  ever 
would  have  admitted. 

rx. 

The  girl  across  the  street  sat  very  long  to-day  with 
her  knitting  in  her  lap.  The  sunlight  fell  on  her  window. 
Sometimes,  when  she  sat  forward,  peering  into  the 
street  (she  hasn't  my  range  of  the  park),  the  sunlight 
leaped  into  her  hair,  giving  it  the  luster  of  bright  bronze. 

I  guess  her  eyes  are  blue;  a  deep  blue,  however,  some 
thing  between  the  sapphire  and  the  bloodstone.  Accord 
ing  to  Professor  Trayvor,  she  should  wear  a  fire  opal. 

She  has  a  puzzling  kind  of  radiance.  She  laughs 
radiantly — I  feel  the  infection  even  at  this  distance — 
showing  a  glint  of  teeth  that  have  a  young  whiteness. 
She  is  very  young  .  .  .  not  so  young  as  Juliette  was; 
maybe  not  so  young  as  Joan.  It  looks  sentimental  to 
write  it,  but  she  doesn't  suggest  years  at  all.  She  should 
have  a  flowing  name,  like  Felicia — a  velvet  name  rather 
than  a  milky  one.  I  hope  it  isn't  a  foolish  name,  the 
kind  they  stick  on  a  red  eight-pound  infant,  and  that  has 
just  that  sound  when  the  victim  reaches  forty  and  is 
elected  to  something. 

I  wonder  if  Aunt  Paul  knows  any  of  her  neighbors. 


Sarah  has  been  mysteriously  busy;  I  have  found 
many  paths,  and  we  have  both,  in  company,  made  the 
profoundly  significant  plunge  of  a  call  on  Aunt  Portia 
Rowning. 

No  more  selfish  tranquillity!  No  more  sordid  in 
dividuality  !  No  more  living,  thinking,  giving,  or  acquir 
ing  for  oneself  alone!  We  have  lived  lives  of  shameless 
detachment.  We  have  been  sunken  in  the  sin  of  sloth, 
socially  speaking.  We  have  been  of  the  craven  lot  of 
men  and  women  who  have  forgotten  Man  and  Woman. 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  33 

We  don't  "belong"  enough.  We  aren't  in  touch.  This 
was  all  very  well,  perhaps,  while  we  lived  in  a  hole  in 
the  ground.  Now  it  is  different — momentously  differ 
ent.  There  is  so  much  to  be  done.  In  the  matter  of 
the  war,  for  example.  Suppose  we  get  dragged  in? 
Who  is  to  take  the  lead  in  all  the  things  that  will  have 
to  be  done?  You  can't  expect  anything  from  the  herd. 
.  .  .  And  so  on. 

I  never  felt  so  inferior,  so  trivial,  so  steeped  in  the 
wickedness  of  withdrawal. 

Sarah  listened  in  a  portentous  silence.  .  .  . 

My  Rowning  aunt  lives  in  a  sternly  elegant  house  on 
Park  Avenue,  with  a  lot  of  heavy  furniture,  dark,  high 
vistas,  imposing  mirrors,  and  an  expensive-looking  butler 
— a  serene  man  with  a  habit  of  seesawing  his  eyebrows. 

It  is  an  impressive  thing  to  watch  my  aunt  Portia 
come  into  a  room,  particularly  if  it  is  a  large  room  and 
has  many  people  in  it.  She  has  become  particularly 
formidable  since  becoming  a  trifle  breathless.  Her 
breathlessness  seems  always  to  accuse  the  atmosphere, 
or  at  least  to  convict  the  ventilation.  She  doesn't  mere 
ly  pervade,  she  dominates  an  apartment.  She  has  a 
large  manner,  with  which  there  must  be  a  consciousness 
if  not  an  expectation  that  people  will  ask  who  she  is. 
When  she  releases  the  eye-glasses  from  the  catch  on  the 
left  side  of  her  wide  bosom  with  an  imperious  hand  (a 
very  handsome  hand),  and  adjusts  the  lenses  on  a  nose 
like  that  of  the  Empress  Augusta,  the  effect  would  impel 
attention  anywhere. 

That  had  seemed  to  be  a  stroke  of  sheer  genius  by 
which  she  chose  to  lean  toward  the  anti-suffragists,  even 
if  the  thing  did  amuse  my  uncle  George  Rowning.  My 
uncle  George,  who  is  fully  four  inches  short  of  her 
height,  sturdy,  opulent,  quizzical  (like  my  mother), 
often  seems  to  regard  Mrs.  Rowning  as  particularly 
amusing.  There  is  genuine  liking  in  his  way  of  looking 
at  her.  It  appears  that  she  knows  just  when  to  ask 


34  THE   GREAT  DESIRE 

him  to  go  with  her  anywhere — the  supreme  test  of  con 
nubial  tact.  Certainly  he  never  has  the  appearance  of 
being  dragged  in,  nor,  like  so  many  modern  husbands, 
of  following  the  masterful  female  with  the  meekness 
of  the  lesser  male. 

Mrs.  Rowning  is  the  sort  of  woman  of  whom  all  the 
newspapers  have  portraits  on  file.  She  is  always  doing 
something  that  can  be  written  up,  and  she  can  be  de 
pended  upon  to  have  duplicate  typewritten  copies  of 
everything  she  is  going  to  say.  Her  political  success  is 
largely  due  to  her  stout  defense  of  the  homely  traditions. 
When  Mrs.  Perridge  threw  her  famous  "Conjugal  Dis 
sent"  bomb  into  the  Artemis  Club,  she  calmly  snuffed 
out  the  fuse,  as  it  were,  and  crushed  the  offender  off 
hand  with  a  blighting  speech.  Rowning  laughed  softly 
when  he  read  the  thing  in  the  paper  on  his  way  down 
town.  She  had  wrought  tears  on  the  subject  of  chil 
dren,  though  she  herself  never  has  fortified  the  race 
against  the  hazard  of  extinction.  Really,  you  couldn't 
fancy  my  aunt  with  a  baby.  It  would  be  like  having 
her  parade  with  a  patented  teddy-bear. 

I  could  see  by  the  way  she  looked  at  Sarah — it  was 
a  gracious,  intent,  then  admiring  look — that  she  was 
speculating  as  to  what  could  be  done  with  her.  She 
had  a  hearty  enough  way  of  looking  down  at  me.  But 
I  seemed  to  be  deferred  as  a  more  intricate  problem, 
as  very  likely  of  doubtful  usefulness.  I  was,  however, 
fully  included  in  the  denunciation  of  all  these  rabid, 
monstrous  radicalisms  that  are  making  so  much  trouble, 
and  that  sooner  or  later  get  hold  of  drifting  people; 
not  only  Socialistic  drivel  such  as  you  hear  down  in 
Greenwich  Village,  but  what  amounts  to  downright 
anarchy,  the  horrid  Mother  Earth  sort  of  stuff  that  used 
to  be  whispered  in  nasty  red-wine  places  and  that  now 
(maybe  it  is  the  war)  is  to  be  heard  and  perused  where 
it  is  absolutely  inconceivable  that  it  should  have  found 
its  way.  What  are  needed,  and  needed  tremendously, 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  35 

are  counteracting  influences,  the  great  stabilities,  sanely 
organized  things — not  cheap  Uplift,  or  anything  like 
that — safeguarding  the  eternal  decencies  upon  which  the 
whole  fabric  of  Society  rests. 

It  was  made  utterly  clear  that  Aunt  Portia  is  an 
aggressive  social  stand-patter — that  she  is  Social  Order 
standardized  and  personified. 

Fortunately  Sarah  and  I  were  not  closely  interrogated. 
In  fact,  she  had  only  begun  inquiries  about  home  and 
family  matters  when  she  glanced  (for  the  third  time) 
at  her  wrist  watch.  Her  day  is  superbly  subdivided. 
She  gives  no  sign  of  haste.  She  has  the  unequivocal 
deliberation  of  a  minute  hand.  I'm  sure  her  pulse 
ticks. 

It  may  be  that  she  had  heard  the  mutter  of  her  car, 
ordered,  I  have  no  doubt,  for  that  stroke  of  the  morning. 
It  was  standing  outside. 

"You  will  go  with  me!"  she  said,  with  a  brilliant  cor 
diality.  "It  will  give  you  an  idea."  And  she  arose 
with  a  rustling  breathlessness. 

As  she  had  forgotten  to  tell  us  where  we  were  going, 
it  was  impossible  to  guess  what  order  of  idea  might  be 
in  waiting.  The  novelty  of  the  event  made  this  seem 
unimportant.  A  vivid  effect  of  luxury  was  furnished 
by  the  car  itself.  It  was  as  softly  conclusive  as  one  of 
my  aunt's  systems.  We  glided  swiftly  and  command- 
ingly  through  many  streets.  Blind-looking  palaces, 
hesitating  pedestrians,  buses,  perky  little  cars  and  big, 
arrogant  cars,  traffic  policemen,  "exclusive"  shops,  and 
occasional  horse-driven  vehicles  were  blurred  in  the 
panorama  of  the  windows.  These  elements  become  un 
real,  curiously  aloof  and  negligible.  The  real  elements 
were  the  three  figures  in  this  silken  box,  the  statuesque 
back  of  the  chauffeur,  and  the  gardenias  in  the  bracket 
vase.  A  thing  of  that  sort  is  like  an  opiate.  It  stifles 
every  vital  impulse.  One  can  have  no  conscience  in  a 
car  like  that. 


36  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"I'm  confident,  Anson,"  said  Aunt  Portia,  obliquely, 
"that  you  will  find  some  new  and  absorbing  interests 
here  in  New  York." 

I  assured  her  that  I  was  quite  certain  of  this. 

"We  are  living  in  such  an  important  era!" 

Unparalleled  in  history,  I  admitted. 

"And  yet,  you  know,  we  must  never  forget — for  an 
instant — that  the  fundamental  machinery  of  the  world 
is  to  be  kept  in  order;  that  no  distractions,  not  even 
the  appalling  distraction  of  that  war  over  there,  can  lift 
the  obligation  to  watch,  with  the  tenderest  solicitude. 
.  .  .  Good  morning!" 

This  was  to  some  one  in  a  passing  car,  the  half- 
articulate  salutation  that  accompanies  a  nod. 

"...  with  the  most  parental  feeling  of  responsibility, 
every  charge  that  is  imposed  upon  the  caretakers  of 
the  world.  I  don't  want  you  to  think  that  I  feel  like 
an  appointed  or  anointed  guardian,  or  anything  like  that. 
Of  course  not.  Far  from  it.  None  of  us  can  do  more 
than  a  very  little.  And  the  work  never  gets  finished. 
That's  a  dreadful  part  of  it." 

Yes,  I  appreciated  that  fully. 

The  trouble  is,  she  pointed  out,  that  there  is  so  much 
indifference.  It's  so  hard  to  wake  people  up,  or  to  keep 
them  going.  .  .  .  That  keeping  them  going  was  a  very  im 
portant  part  of  the  situation.  They  could  be  started 
splendidly  sometimes.  Take  a  thing  like  the  Society 
for  the  Aid  of  Wayward  Girls.  It  began  with  a  whoop. 
Then  there  you  were.  Positive  inertia.  And  wayward 
ness  increasing  like  weeds  in  a  garden.  Such  pitiful 
cases !  Somebody  must  do  the  work — and  find  the  money, 
too. 

It  would  be  dreadful,  I  thought,  if  they  didn't  find 
the  waywardness;  if  suddenly,  without  a  decent  warning 
to  anybody,  waywardness  ceased  to  be.  ...  But  there  was 
an  answer  to  this. 

"Of  course,"  pursued  Aunt  Portia,  with  a  gloved  gest- 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  37 

ure,  "that  is  only  one  of  a  hundred  things  that  demand 
the  same  sort  of  downright  hard  work  and  watching.  If 
you  don't  watch  them  they  begin  to  slip.  .  .  ."  She  made 
this  very  vivid.  I  could  see  a  procession  of  things,  like 
the  panorama  beyond  the  limousine's  windows,  slip 
ping  .  .  .  slipping  .  .  .  into  a  frightful  mess  of  unwatched 
interests,  all  gasping  or  sprawling  or  leering  in  depraved 
indifference. 

Then  the  car  halted  softly,  and  my  aunt  led  the  way 
into  a  gray  chapel,  an  intensely  established  place  with 
a  mortuary  sobriety  in  every  line  and  tint,  in  which 
there  were  a  dozen  women.  Presently  there  were  more 
women  .  .  .  and  a  rector. 

I  can't  write  about  that  meeting.  It  doesn't  matter. 
I  never  before  attended  such  a  meeting,  but  I  know  all 
about  it.  Probably  I  couldn't  explain  how  I  know  all 
about  it — how  I  have  always  known  all  about  it.  One 
gets  it  in  his  bones.  It  is  the  established  obvious.  Its 
most  sensational  notes  have  a  drone.  Nothing  happens. 
Every  accent  of  it  has  the  flavor  of  an  immense  antiquity. 
One  could  imagine  identical  cadences  as  occurring  at 
any  time  since  the  Cretaceous  period.  It  is  an  echoing 
corridor,  without  a  turn,  ending  in  infinity.  It  is  the 
piercingly  sustained  dominant  note  of  Social  System. 
It  is  organized  Complacency,  exquisitely  serious,  ex 
pertly  intrusive,  with  a  limousined  finality.  There  have 
been  many  changes  in  religion,  but  these  changes  have 
done  their  work.  There  have  been  many  changes  in 
Society,  but  the  proper  system  for  Society  is  finished  at 
last.  Charity  has  faltered  and  experimented,  but  now 
it  knows  the  way,  thank  God!  Everything  is  finished. 
Morality  is  finished.  We  not  only  know  what  they  need, 
but  just  how  organization,  standardization,  and  efficiency 
will  ultimately  accomplish  a  divine  order.  Of  course 
there  will  be  disturbers  always,  but  this  only  emphasizes 
the  need  for  these  things.  For  instance,  here  was  a 
woman  in  Brooklyn  or  New  Jersey  or  somewhere  who 

4 


38  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

was  actually  taking  off  blind  babies  to  care  for  on  her 
own  account,  without  organization,  without  considering 
for  a  moment  the  rights  and  obligations  of  the  state. 
She  claimed — of  course  she  had  to  claim  something — 
that  the  state  made  no  provision  for  blind  children  be 
fore  they  were  eight  years  old.  Evidently  this  was  a 
mere  pretense,  a  dangerous  pretense.  People  are  always 
trumping  up  excuses  for  disorderly  activities  of  one  sort 
or  another.  Then  here  was  a  man  (seemingly  a  per 
fectly  respectable  and  well-connected  man,  too)  who 
wanted  to  take  the  wickedest  sort  of  boys  out  of  reform 
atories  and  "give  them  a  chance"  on  an  unguarded 
farm  where  they  were  certain  to  terrorize  a  tranquil 
countryside  and  undermine  the  whole  structure  of  legiti 
mate  and  laboriously  formulated  Correction. 

The  meeting  had  something  to  do  with  tenement 
reform,  or  maybe  it  was  simply  fire-escapes.  There  was 
too  much  to  think  of  to  follow  that  particular  thread. 
I  had  the  feeling  that  they  would  have  said  the  same 
things  in  the  same  way  at  any  gathering  of  the  same 
people  in  a  like  place.  I  am  sure  that  a  lean  woman 
wearing  horn-rimmed  glasses,  with  an  old-family  look, 
would  have  discussed  hot-water  bags,  no  matter  what 
the  subject  of  the  meeting.  And  my  aunt,  though  I'm 
sure  she  spoke  to  the  point,  whatever  it  was,  sounded 
precisely  as  she  did  in  the  car. 

I  asked  myself  there,  and  I  asked  myself  in  the  free 
air  outdoors,  What  do  they  want? 

There  must  be  some  definite  impulse  behind  these 
benevolent  mummeries. 

What  does  Portia  Masterson  Rowning  want? 

Is  it  the  same  thing  the  old-family  lady  wants? 

Is  there  a  common  desire  that  explains  them  all? 

Sarah  was  not  likely  to  have  had  the  identical  thought, 
though  for  me  it  had  swirled  like  a  great,  staring  ques 
tion  mark  in  the  drab  atmosphere  of  the  chapel. 

When   my   aunt   had   alighted   for   an   anti-suffrage 


BABES  IN  THE  WOOD  39 

luncheon  at  the  Ritz,  and  the  car  was  carrying  us  back 
to  what  Hazen  used  to  call  "the  dear  old  flat,"  I  asked 
Sarah  what  she  thought  of  it. 

"Well,"  she  said,  sitting  forward  with  her  hands  in 
her  lap,  "  if  I  were  a  man  I  think  it  would  make  me  want 
to  rob  a  bank." 

I  guessed  that  she  hadn't  figured  out  a  feminine 
equivalent.  On  the  other  hand,  I  told  her,  the  thing 
made  me  feel  more  keenly  than  ever  the  danger  of  going 
too  close  to  the  overt  act — made  me  feel  that  it  was  a 
relentless  world. 

"And  yet,"  said  Sarah,  "Aunt  Portia  is  a  remarkable 
woman." 

Of  the  truth  of  the  characterization  there  isn't  a  doubt. 
It  is  this  fact  that  gives  dimension  to  the  mystery  behind 
my  unanswered  question. 

Then  Sarah  laughed.  "I  was  just  wondering,"  she 
said,  "what  Laura  Sherrick  would  think  about  that 
meeting." 

"Have  you  seen  her?" 

Sarah  acted  as  if  I  had  been  tricked  into  an  eagerness. 
It  was  plain  curiosity — a  little  more,  perhaps.  I  do  want 
to  know  who  Laura  Sherrick  is — if  she  really  is.  Some 
times  I  have  hung  over  the  possibility  that  Sarah  may 
have  invented  her. 

The  answer  to  my  direct  question  was  without  gratu 
itous  margins.  "No.  To-morrow." 

Thus  our  lives  reek  with  the  beginnings  of  things. 


PART    TWO 

Neighbors 


I  HAVE  met  Rudley. 
On  Tuesday  afternoon,  with  Aunt  Portia  Rowning 
still  stirring  foolish  speculations  in  my  mind,  I  had 
gone  to  hunt  up  Major  Whelan,  an  old  friend  of  my 
father,  and  had  been  persuaded  to  go  home  with  him 
to  an  early-evening  meal  that  was  neither  supper  nor 
dinner,  as  you  might  say,  yet  one  of  those  table  incidents 
that  somehow  stand  out  distinctly  as  an  event.  The 
major  lives  with  an  elderly  sister  in  a  weather-worn 
brick  house  in  the  Chelsea  region.  I  wish  heartily  to 
see  him  again ;  he  is  full  of  pungent  geniality,  very  proud 
of  knowing  forgotten  things  about  New  York.  He  looks 
like  Dave  Warfield,  the  actor. 

I  had  left  the  major  while  the  evening  was  still  young, 
and  against  his  remonstrance,  mostly  because  I  dis 
covered  by  chance  that  this  was  his  night  for  a  certain 
club,  and,  after  a  brisk  walk,  had  swung  into  Fourth 
Avenue,  when  I  was  halted  at  Pietro's  news-stand  by 
the  splayed  extras,  and  particularly  by  the  flash  of  the 
dramatic  word  " Verdun." 

(Pietro  comes  from  Polistina,  down  in  the  toe  of  Italy's 
boot.  His  wife  is  from  San  Fratello,  across  the  way  in 
Sicily.  They  have  six  children.  The  boy  of  twelve 
helps  Pietro  shine  shoes  in  the  tight  little  booth  beside 
the  news-stand.  You  buy  your  paper,  then  climb  into 
one  of  the  three  chairs,  and  regale  yourself  with  the  hor 
rors  of  a  world  at  war  while  Pietro  embellishes  your  ex- 


NEIGHBORS  41 

tremities.  When  the  boy,  whose  name  is  Vittorio,  does 
the  shining,  or  perhaps  is  permitted  to  care  for  one  foot, 
he  has  a  way  of  flapping  the  bit  of  polishing-cloth  so  as 
to  produce  a  report  like  the  snapping  of  a  whip,  and  is 
mutely  and  solemnly  proud  of  the  accomplishment.) 

"So,  mister,"  said  Pietro,  "other  big  battle." 

I  read  the  flaming  head-line,  taking  its  tragedy  on 
unhealed  wounds. 

"But  not  Trieste  yet,  Pietro?" 

Pietro  shook  his  head,  but  without  solemnity.  "They 
get  eem,"  he  said,  smilingly,  as  I  passed  the  coin  for  my 
paper. 

"Good  night,  Pietro!" 

"I  beg  your  pardon.  .  .  .!" 

As  I  turned  away  I  had  run  squarely  into  Rudley. 
Naturally  I  knew  him  at  once,  but  he  had  less  success 
in  fixing  me.  It  was  curious  to  watch  him,  there  at  the 
street  corner,  in  the  slanting  light  from  under  the  hood  of 
the  booth,  withdrawing  the  hand  that  had  been  extended 
toward  Pietro's  wares,  and  eying  me  incredulously, 
searchingly,  then  with  a  recognizing  flash.  (Acutely 
distinguishing  marks  are  a  great  help  to  identification.) 

"Grayl!" 

"The  same,"  I  said.  Our  fingers  met.  And  I  wished 
myself  in  bed. 

He  may  have  felt  my  embarrassment,  and  might  easily 
enough  have  invested  it  with  any  one  of  a  score  of  mean 
ings.  It  would  depend,  of  course,  upon  how  clearly  he 
recalled  me.  His  recollection  of  me,  whatever  it  might 
be,  would  give  him  a  basis. 

"You'll  forgive  me,  Grayl,  for  fumbling  to  get  you," 
he  burst  out.  "I  simply  couldn't  ...  in  New  York,  you 
know!  Not  that  a  man  doesn't  meet  any  one  in  New 
York.  But  somehow  it  has  been  so  long.  ...  I  guess 
that's  it — my  imagination  established  you  there  in 
Naugaway.  I  meant  to  see  you  when  I  was  up  there 
the  other  day.  .  .  .  Where  are  you  stopping?" 


42  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"We're  next-door  neighbors,"  I  said,  entirely  con 
scious  that  the  surprisingness  of  the  fact  had  to  come 
one  way  or  another.  We  were  too  close  for  evasions. 

There  was  no  way  of  avoiding  the  certainty  that  we 
should  traverse  the  distance  to  the  roof  that  sheltered 
us  both,  and  that  no  greater  brevity  could  be  given  to 
that  meeting.  As  I  look  back  upon  the  journey,  short 
as  it  was,  I  feel  that  I  must  have  acted  absurdly.  Only 
some  recollection  that  I  used  to  be  considered  "queer" 
can  explain  his  seeming  acceptance  of  my  halting  an 
swers  without  sign  of  curiosity  or  resentment. 

"In  the  same  house?  .  .  .  On  the  same  floor!"  Could 
you  beat  that?  Picked  out  of  a  world  and  chucked  to 
gether.  Rowning;  he  had  seen  the  name  . . .  my  mother's 
sister.  He  remembered  my  mother  clearly — a  remark 
able  woman.  He  owed  a  lot  to  her.  He  had  hoped  to 
see  her  the  other  day.  .  .  . 

As  we  stepped  out  of  the  elevator  he  put  his  hand  on 
my  shoulder,  sending  an  extraordinary  tingle  through  my 
whole  body. 

"  Grayl,  won't  you  come  in  for  a  little  while?  Neigh 
bors,  you  know.  After  all  these  years  .  .  ." 

There  was  something  commanding  about  him,  or,  if 
it  was  not  that,  something  impelling — at  least  it  had  that 
effect  upon  me.  I  suddenly  found  that  I  wanted  to  go. 
Whether  I  liked  the  process  or  not,  the  solution  of  certain 
questions  was  needed  to  clear  an  intolerable  situation. 
That  situation  couldn't  go  on.  No,  I  had  to  face  it 
somehow.  Seemingly  my  state  of  mind  hadn't  precipi 
tated  any  catastrophe  as  yet.  Perhaps  I  could  blunder 
through.  And  then  I  must  admit  that  I  was  obsessed 
by  an  intense  curiosity. 

This  curiosity  in  itself  gave  an  odd  poignancy  to  every 
impression  of  the  place  within  that  door,  to  the  sense 
of  every  visible  detail  in  the  apartment  that  reversed  the 
topography  of  our  own.  The  total  of  the  place,  as  one 
got  it  first,  was  of  its  being  impromptu,  as  if  it  had  been 


NEIGHBORS  43 

hurriedly,  or  at  least  impulsively,  strewn  with  elements 
and  left  to  itself.  For  instance,  in  one  corner  of  the 
large  room,  corresponding  to  my  aunt's  prim  parlor,  is 
a  cow-puncher's  saddle,  a  rifle,  a  coiled  lariat,  a  gun- 
case,  and  other  litter  suggestive  of  a  Western  out-of- 
doors.  The  crowning  paradox,  in  another  corner,  is  a 
barrel,  imperfectly  obscured  by  a  Navajo  blanket.  In 
grotesque  contrast  to  these  elements  are  a  beautifully 
carved  cabinet — Italian,  I  should  think — a  piece  of  Rus 
sian  bronze  (on  a  bookcase,  and  huddled  in  the  over 
flow),  a  big,  silent  grandfather's  clock,  and  half  a  dozen 
interesting-looking  prints  and  paintings.  One  of  the 
pictures  stands  out — a  brown-toned  photograph  of  a 
woman  with  amazingly  beautiful  eyes. 

These  things  I  saw  rather  quickly  while  Rudley,  after 
invoking  light  from  a  spreading  table-lamp  and  drawing 
forward  a  ludicrously  large  chair,  prowled  for  tobacco. 
When  I  begged  off  from  the  cigars  he  put  the  box  aside 
and  found  a  pipe,  a  short,  black,  bulldoggish  pipe  which 
he  fed  from  a  jar  on  the  corner  of  the  table,  talking 
rapidly  while  he  struck  a  match. 

Engulfed  in  the  big  chair,  I  saw  him  from  an  angle  that 
exaggerated  his  height,  and  the  up-shining  lamp  gave  a 
theatrical  modeling  to  his  face,  which  has  an  outdoor 
color,  with  an  experienced  strength  in  it,  and  something 
suggestive  of  an  interrupted  boyish  radiance.  The  fair 
hair  and  the  darkish  eyes,  the  mouth  with  its  sensitive 
changes,  the  energetic  line  of  the  chin,  the  mobility  of 
his  shoulders  in  any  bit  of  action — the  whole  make  of 
him  struck  me  as  impressively  vigorous  and  fine  ...  so 
that  I  was  more  perplexed  than  ever.  Yes,  if  I  could 
be  born  again  I  should  like  to  look  like  Rudley.  Yet  I 
tried  to  read  the  evil  streak.  I  thought  it  must  be  there. 
I  thought  I  should  be  able  to  read  the  sign  of  it.  If  there 
is  anything  in  physiognomy  or  phrenology,  I  suppose  it 
is  all  there,  written  as  plainly  as  in  a  book.  (Isn't  it 
droll  that  while  science  makes  it  plain  that  all  of  the 


44  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

traits  of  an  organism — not  merely  some,  but  all  of  the 
traits — are  written  indelibly  in  its  form  and  fiber,  there 
is  no  mercy  for  the  searcher  who  uses  any  but  the  pre 
scribed  ways  of  doing  the  searching!) 

"Look  here,  Grayl!"  said  Rudley,  suddenly — so  sud 
denly  that  I  winced  apprehensively — "I  hate  beating 
about  the  bush.  The  other  day  when  I  went  up  to  the 
village  I  met  your  sister." 

"I  know,"  I  said. 

"There  were  some  things  I  wanted  to  do  there  .  .  . 
some  people  I  wanted  to  see.  Then  I  took  the  next 
train  down.  ...  A  man  doesn't  do  a  thing  like  that  with 
out  feeling —  Well,  at  first  I  rather  excused  myself  for 
digging  out.  I  felt  enraged  clean  through.  Then  I  be 
gan  to  see  that  I  had  been  somewhat  of  a  fool  ...  to 
let  a  girl's  fling — " 

"You  were  foolish,"  I  said. 

He  stood  leaning  against  the  table,  eying  me  sharply. 

"Why—?" 

"It's  all  so  simple " 

"If  I  had  been  able  to  get  the  simplicity  of  it,"  he 
said,  sternly,  "I  shouldn't  be  taking  this  chance  of 
amusing  you." 

"Sarah  thought  you  were  Hannigan,"  I  said. 

He  stared  at  me  with  gathered  brows.  "Hannigan? — 
Oh,  Biff!"  And  his  laugh  had  any  number  of  meanings. 
"I  see,  it  was  Biff  who  was  being  scolded.  Poor  Biff! 
Yet  he  was  lucky.  It  isn't  the  first  time  he  has  dodged 
a  blow." 

"Of  course,"  I  said,  "I  have  no  right  to  speak  for 
Sarah—" 

"I  can  understand  that!"  exclaimed  Rudley,  quite  as 
if  he  had  a  feeling  that  Sarah  was  immensely  capable  of 
speaking  for  herself.  "The  trouble  is,  Grayl  .  .  ." 

He  sat  down,  crossing  his  knees  and  studying  the  black 
pipe. 

"  Why  do  you  suppose  I'm  saying  this  to  you?     I  hate 


NEIGHBORS  45 

whining  confidences.  You'll  think  that  I'm  going  to 
tell  you  the  story  of  my  life.  Probably  you're  wonder 
ing  at  this  minute  how  you  can  decently  get  away." 

He  may  have  thought  that  he  was  overstating  the  case, 
but  I  was  far  from  being  eager  to  stay. 

"The  trouble  is  that  your  sister  touched  the  raw. 
And  the  touch  came  just  at  the  moment  when  it  hurt 
most.  It  looked  so  easy — it  was  the  big,  impressive 
fact  to  me  that  it  began  to  seem  wonderfully  easy — to 
face  about  and  begin  again.  When  something  hits  you 
then — well,  maybe  you  know  what  that  might  be  like. 
Maybe  not.  I  don't  know  what  your  life  has  been.  I 
hope  you  don't  know  anything  about  being  chucked. 
A  great  thing,  being  chucked,  for  developing  a  man,  too. 
But  never  mind  that.  The  point  is — the  point  of  the 
thing  I  shouldn't  be  telling  you  is  this — that  mistaken 
thrust  of  Sarah  Grayl  finished  a  certain  business,  rather 
harshly — harshly,  I  mean,  as  to  the  way  it  happened 
to  make  me  dive  out  of  the  old  village  before  I  wanted 
to  go,  before  I  had  done  what  I  went  there  to  do.  It 
completed  the  cure." 

"Cure!"  I  thought.  And  we  had  seen  him  chased 
from  a  den! 

"I  just  happen  to  feel  like  telling  you  what  I  mean 
by  that,"  he  went  on,  in  a  tone  that  had  the  effect  of 
revealing  some  sort  of  defiance  of  himself.  "I've  gone 
to  hell  and  back  as  a  gambler —  No,  I'm  not  going  to 
pitch  the  story  at  you.  I  say  back.  I  mean  that.  The 
other  night  I  made  my  last  play.  I  wanted  to  know 
I  was  through.  Sounds  pretty  cheap,  doesn't  it?  Like 
the  last  drink,  and  all  that.  You  won't  understand,  but 
I  wanted  to  know.  So  I  played — and  lost.  It  would 
have  made  no  difference  which  way  it  went.  I  turned 
my  back.  It  was  over.  I  had  made  my  greatest  winning. 
I  knew  that  the  fire  had  burned  out — or  that  I  had 
smothered  it  for  good  and  all.  To  make  the  thing 
spectacular,  just  as  I  was  leaving  the  room  I  heard  the 


46  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

axes.  It  was  a  raid.  Yet  I  was  the  happiest  man,  I 
suppose,  who  squeezed  through  that  yapping  crowd  in 
the  street." 

"You  didn't  look  it,"  I  said. 

"Never  mind  how  I  looked,  Grayl,"  he  retorted,  with 
out  flinching  outwardly.  "I  knew  it  was  over.  You 
wouldn't  expect  to  see  me  grinning  with  delight  in  such 
a  situation?  If  you  were  there — and  I  judge  that  your 
remark  isn't  a  jest — you  know  how  a  man  might  feel. 
I  can  see  that  you  think  he  might  feel  a  little  like  a 
criminal." 

He  was  thrusting  his  thumb  into  his  unlighted  brier. 
For  all  of  his  control,  I  knew  that  his  mind  was  hovering 
over  the  fact  I  had  revealed.  There  was  something  he 
wanted  to  know  without  asking,  There  was  something 
I  wouldn't  tell  him.  He  could  figure  the  chance  for 
himself — the  chance  that  Sarah  knew.  He  would  hardly 
guess  that  she  had  been  with  me. 

Then  a  question  began  to  sizzle  in  my  own  mind. 
In  a  flash  it  appeared  to  me  that  I  sat  in  the  presence 
of  one  of  the  elemental  tragedies  of  life.  This  man 
could,  if  he  would,  tell  me  about  gambling — about  the 
gambling  passion.  He  knew  its  naked  self.  .  .  .  He  could 
tell  me  what  they  wanted.  .  .  . 

But  either  the  recollection  of  Sarah  or  something  he 
thought  he  read  in  me  spoiled  my  chance  and  quite 
changed  the  whole  situation. 

Abruptly  his  speech  dove  at  an  invisible  objective, 
one  he  had  deliberately  avoided  but  a  little  while  before. 

"Wasn't  it  that  Schopenhauer  chap  who  pointed  out 
so  beautifully  why  calamity  to  some  one  else  rather 
lifts  us  at  first — the  first  instinct,  you  see,  being  con 
cerned  with  the  fact  that  the  disaster  didn't  come  to 
us?  The  secondary  instinct  depends,  naturally,  on  the 
individual — and  on  how  decent  the  victim  has  been. 
If  he  has  been  pretty  decent  his  tumble  gives  a  great 
joy  to  certain  minds.  Like  those  Greek  fellows,  you 


NEIGHBORS  47 

know,  they  may  be  sick  of  hearing  him  called  The  Just. 
Smear  the  upstart!" 

"You  shouldn't  let  the  thing  do  this  to  you,"  I  pro 
tested. 

"Do  what?" 

"Make  you  cynical." 

"You  mean  peevish.  The  queer  thing  is  that  I'm 
not,  most  of  the  time.  Mostly,  I  guess,  I've  felt  sorry 
for  the  others — for  the  crowd  that  cut  me.  That  may 
be  a  worse  state  of  mind  than  the  other."  Rudley  gave 
a  twisted  laugh.  "Anyway,  you  see  that  I've  been  what 
they  call  *  under  a  cloud,'  and  a  beastly  poor  image  that 
is.  Better  say  branded.  The  cloud  evaporates  or  moves 
on.  The  brand  sticks." 

"Such  a  branding  is  an  illusion,"  I  persisted. 

Rudley  walked  to  the  fireplace,  then  swung  about. 

"But  an  illusion  can  stick,  too.  Nothing  you  could 
do  would  rub  it  away.  If  they  punish  you  more  for 
having  been  decent  before  your  blunder,  they  are  par 
ticularly  irritated  by  your  rise  afterward.  Trying  to 
atone,  eh?  Trying  to  sneak  back.  The  poor  fool!  .  .  . 
You  don't  pretend  not  to  see  that,  do  you?" 

"If  you  want  to  know  what  I  do  see,"  I  replied  to 
this  challenge,  "it  is  that  when  a  man  begins  to  talk 
about  'they'  he  needs  a  cold  shower." 

"Damn  you,  Grayl!"  He  towered  over  me  with  a 
flushed  look.  "Am  I  such  an  imbecile  as  all  that? 
Have  I  .  .  .?" 

It  was  a  wrenching  experience  to  see  him  so  hurt. 
Every  strong  line  in  him  seemed  to  bend  under  the 
stress  of  something  fiercely  resentful  plunging  under  his 
skin. 

"I  suspect,"  I  said,  as  evenly  as  I  could,  with  my 
throat  rather  dry,  "that  you're  one  of  the  sanest  men  I 
know.  But  you've  been  poisoned  by  an  idea.  You 
ought  to  get  it  out  of  your  system.  Who  are  'they'? 
I  tell  you,  Rudley,  'they'  have  sent  many  a  good  man 


48  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

into  an  asylum.  I'm  no  older  than  you  are,  but  I  know 
that.  Maybe  I'm  a  bit  savage  on  that  point  because 
I  once  knew  a  tremendously  clever  chap,  as  clean  and 
strong  and  level-headed  a  person  as  you  are  likely  to 
meet,  who  began  to  say  'they.'  I  didn't  know  what  it 
meant  then.  And  it  hadn't  become  a  habit  with  him. 
.  .  .  Well .  .  .  they  locked  him  up  in  Bloomingdale  finally. 
It  was  .  .  ." 

"So!"  Rudley's  fine  lips  twisted  scornfully.  "I'm 
a  'bug'  or  something  like  that!  Good  God!  I  didn't 
know  you  were  an  alienist,  Grayl.  And  so  young,  too 
— I  understand!"  He  held  up  his  hand.  "You  think 
I  need  a  jolt  like  this.  Very  thoughtful  of  you!  Very." 

He  walked  over  to  the  tobacco-jar.  I  watched  him 
fill  the  pipe  bowl  with  his  long,  efficient  fingers,  his  eyes 
fixed,  meanwhile,  on  the  lamp,  which  painted  a  sharp 
flame  spot  under  each  fringe  of  lashes. 

"Nevertheless,"  I  said,  "it  seems  to  me  that  in  a 
man-size  talk — " 

"You're  perfectly  right."  He  turned  to  me  quietly, 
at  least  with  an  external  quiet.  "Perfectly  right.  I 
won't  say  that  you  show  much  imagination  at  the  mo 
ment.  But  you're  logical,  as  logical  as  a  charity  organi 
zation." 

I  experienced  the  sensation  of  being  very  deep  in  the 
chair,  of  being  engulfed  in  it.  It  rose  vastly  above  my 
head,  and  the  arms  shot  out  to  a  fantastic  length. 

My  position,  mentally  and  bodily,  was  made  particu 
larly  awkward  by  the  sound  of  the  closing  of  the  outer 
door  of  the  apartment  and  a  quick  step  in  the  short 
passage  behind  me.  I  couldn't  see  who  was  coming 
without  actually  getting  out  of  the  chair. 

Rudley  seemed  to  know  who  was  coming,  and  waited 
to  turn  casually  when  the  step  sounded  in  the  room. 
He  said  no  word  until  presently  the  new-comer  loomed 
in  my  range. 

"Grayl,  this  is  my  friend  Mr.  Zorn,  who  shares  these 


NEIGHBORS  49 

quarters  with  me.  Mr.  Grayl  hibernates  in  the  next 
apartment." 

A  wiry  man,  with  a  feverish,  receding  strip  of  bald 
ness,  ill-paired  eyes,  and  a  curt  mouth,  and  wearing  a 
shabby  black  suit,  nodded  and  stared.  As  he  stood, 
his  back  was  toward  the  sliding-doors  of  the  room  that 
corresponded  to  my  own.  The  doors  were  parted  for 
a  space  of  perhaps  twenty  inches.  As  Rudley  began  to 
say  something  about  my  father  I  was  conscious  that 
the  man's  hands  went  behind  him  and  that  the  doors 
were  slowly  drawn  together.  And  he  stood  peering  at 
me  in  a  disagreeably  appraising  way.  Since  the  room 
beyond  was  wholly  dark,  it  was  impossible  to  guess  why 
he  should  have  taken  this  absurd  precaution  against 
scrutiny,  if,  indeed,  that  was  his  notion. 

I  did  at  last  get  out  of  the  big  chair. 

"You  mustn't  go  yet,"  insisted  Rudley. 

I  faltered  some  plea  of  urgency,  said  good  night  to 
the  man  in  black,  eliciting  another  nod,  and  found  my 
way  to  the  door. 

"You  are  permitted  to  retreat,  Grayl,  on  one  con 
dition." 

"The  condition  is  accepted,"  I  said.  "We're  neigh 
bors." 

He  smiled  in  recognition  of  my  understanding.  Then 
his  face  grew  stern  again.  "I  haven't  done  justice  to 
myself,  or  to  you,  either.  It's  an  old  trick  of  mine. 
Yet  maybe  you'll  believe  that  this  has  resulted  in  some 
good — a  lot  of  good.  Let  me  pin  you  down — will  you 
come  in  and  have  dinner  with  us  to-morrow  night?  I 
want  you  to  know  Mark  Zorn." 


He  may  have  wanted  me  to  know  Mark  Zorn,  but  it 
seemed  more  likely  that  he  wanted  to  finish  the  game 
we  had  begun.  We  had  come  to  grips.  Nothing  much 


50  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

had  worked  out  of  it  but  the  clearing  of  a  mystery  for 
him  and  the  deepening  of  a  mystery  for  me.  It  was  the 
deepening  of  the  mystery  for  me  that  performed  its 
part,  I  suppose,  in  preventing  me  from  grasping  success 
fully  at  some  means  of  not  meeting  Mark  Zorn.  I  could 
see  that  the  impulse  to  get  away  really  had  entangled 
me  in  the  new  adventure.  It  was  all  a  part  of  the  em 
barrassing  propinquity.  How  does  one  deal  with  next- 
door  invitations? 

Nevertheless,  from  the  moment  we  came  together  at 
this  queer  dinner  I  found  myself  eagerly  absorbed  in  the 
study  of  Mark  Zorn. 

The  dining-room  by  no  means  repeats  tne  primness 
of  my  aunt's.  In  contrast  it  seems  bare,  utilitarian. 
The  largest  wall  space  holds  a  map  of  the  world,  trav 
ersed  by  sprawling  red  lines  and  specked  with  cryptic 
markings. 

Dinner  was  served  by  a  man  answering  to  the  name 
of  Stokes,  who  evidently  was  also  the  cook — a  stocky 
man  with  a  bulging  forehead,  a  stubble  of  brown  mus 
tache,  and  a  look  of  permanent  surprise.  It  seems  to 
me  that  he  performed  his  functions  with  unnecessary 
violence,  particularly  his  transitions  through  the  swing 
ing  door  to  the  kitchen.  There  was,  however,  no  lack 
of  dexterity  and  precision  anywhere. 

Mr.  Zorn  came  to  the  table  in  his  house  coat,  which 
is  simply  a  traveling-"  duster,"  whose  length  gives  it  the 
appearance  of  a  drab  cassock  and  lends  something  comic 
to  his  lankiness.  Under  this  absurd  garment  his  black 
legs  seem  to  weave  as  in  a  cloud.  The  turned-back 
wrists  of  the  coat  show  old-fashioned  round  cuffs,  too 
large,  and  accentuating  his  bony,  eloquent  hands. 

Ordinarily  I  don't  believe  I  am  acutely  conscious  of 
detail  in  personal  appearance,  but  Zorn's  image  some 
how  has  driven  indelibly  deep,  very  likely  because  he 
is  so  extraordinarily  different.  Another  man  might  have 
a  bald  space  just  as  pink,  but  I'm  sure  no  other  has  this 


NEIGHBORS  si 

flushed  area  flanked  so  strangely  with  utterly  black, 
wiry  hair  that  does  not  seem  tc  have  a  strand  of  gray, 
though  he  must  be  well  past  fifty.  And  then  his  eyes. 
There  is  a  queer  irregularity,  as  if  one  eye  were  blind, 
or  wrong  in  some  way.  One  eye,  indeed,  is  more 
prominent  and  piercing  than  the  other — until  he  be 
comes  intense,  as  he  may  all  of  a  moment.  Then  they 
co-ordinate  perfectly,  blazing  with  almost  a  terrifying 
flame.  It  is  when  he  withdraws  from  you,  when  he 
turns  upon  himself,  that  one  orb  seems  to  follow  farther 
than  the  other,  and  the  disparity  is  deepened. 

I  have  said  that  he  had  a  curt  mouth.  The  expression 
of  that  feature  is  not  improved  by  a  slight  white  scar 
on  the  left  of  the  upper  lip.  (Nature  has  seemed  dis 
posed  not  to  leave  him  trite  at  any  point.)  His  smile 
changes  him  fantastically — has  a  way  of  threatening  to 
make  you  revise  your  judgment  of  his  looks,  quite  as 
if  he  had  been  rubbed  out  and  redrawn.  His  smile  is 
like  the  rest  of  him — different;  not  springing,  as  it  ap 
peared  last  night,  from  amusement,  from  any  feeling  of 
humor,  so  much  as  from  some  sense  of  discovery,  some 
confirmation  of  a  theory,  negatively  or  elsewise.  It  re 
mained  while  he  seized  the  thought  and  turned  it  about, 
vanishing  when  the  process  was  over. 

Mr.  Zorn  did  not  repeat  his  sharp  look  at  me  when  our 
meeting-time  came.  In  all  likelihood  Rudley  had  made 
me  clear  to  him.  However,  from  the  very  beginning 
there  was  an  intentness  of  scrutiny  that  was  trying 
enough.  Naturally  I  interpreted  this  at  first  as  sus 
picion,  or  resentment  for  my  intrusion.  Whatever  it 
was,  it  kept  him  alert  for  me. 

For  instance,  Rudley  had  been  copiously  hostlike  in 
talk,  and  in  the  course  of  time  remarked:  "A  bit  odd, 
isn't  it?  There  I  was  in  Naugaway  last  week,  in  a 
little  village  where  you  would  think  a  man  must  see  and 
be  seen  by  everybody,  and  I  didn't  see  you.  Here  in 
the  big  town  we  run  together." 


52  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

He  stated  this  commonplace  of  chance,  it  seemed  to 
me,  with  the  unction  of  a  gambler. 

Before  I  could  check  myself  I  blurted  out,  "Rolled 
into  the  same  pocket." 

Rudley  himself  betrayed  no  sign  of  detecting  any 
thing  intentionally  significant  in  the  foolish  allusion,  but 
Mr.  Zorn  turned  his  face  to  me  with  a  movement  of 
electrical  quickness,  looking  just  long  enough  to  ask  a 
mental  question  and  to  leave  it  unanswered.  Then  he 
turned  to  Rudley. 

"Why  do  you  call  that  odd?  There  was  a  reason  why 
you  didn't  see  him  in  the  village.  There  is  an  equally 
good  reason  why  you  have  seen  him  here.  Do  two  rea 
sons  make  an  oddity?" 

"Oh,  come,  Zorn!"  cried  Rudley,  "in  the  name  of 
all  your  Vedic  deities  don't  be  quarrelsome." 

To  this  remark  Mr.  Zorn  appeared  bent  upon  making 
no  response  at  all.  Then  suddenly  he  looked  up  again 
from  his  plate. 

"This  Rudley  person,  Mr. — eh — Grayl,  is  a  most  com 
plicated  human  document.  I  venture  to  mention  this 
because  you  have  been  associated  with  a  studious  pro 
fession.  Really,  he  reeks  with  contradictions.  I  mean 
that  he  exhibits  an  abnormal  excess  of  them,  for  of 
course  all  personality  is  essentially  a  matter  of  con 
tradictions.  Only  an  imbecile  is  without  contradic 
tions  .  .  ." 

"Gracias,"  said  Rudley. 

"I  could  regale  you  with  the  most  diverting  stories 
about  him.  Probably  you  could  supplement  them. 
They  would  illustrate  his  amazing  diversity.  If  I 
hadn't  found  him  in  time  he  would  have  become  too 
intricate  for  any  hopeful  study.  And  it  is  to  study  him 
that  I  am  here.  The  opportunity  was  irresistible.  I 
found  him,  dextro  tempore  .  .  .  and  so  you  have  us." 

"What  Zorn  means — "  said  Rudley,  grinning. 

"Don't  presume  to  tell  the  young  man  what  I  mean," 


NEIGHBORS  53 

interjected  Mr.  Zorn.  "It  is  quite  evident  that  he 
doesn't  believe  me.  That  is  enough." 

I  tried  to  say  that  I  was  entirely  capable  of  wishing 
to  do  a  little  studying  myself.  There  was  nothing  to 
prevent  me  from  trying  both  of  them. 

"Not  a  bad  notion,"  declared  Mr.  Zorn.  "After  all, 
you  know,  one  man  is  as  good  as  another  for  your  pur 
pose.  All  biology  is  written  in  each  organism — if  you 
can  go  under  the  skin.  .  .  .  Doctors  get  their  anatomy 
from  nameless  cadavers.  Any  old  soul  will  give  you 
your  psychology  if  you  have  the  power  to  read." 

At  this  moment  I  happened  to  catch  a  glimpse  of 
Stokes.  He  was  still  looking  surprised.  I  wondered 
what  he  thought  of  Mr.  Zorn — of  all  of  us,  for  that  mat 
ter.  But  his  gaze  was  bent  upon  the  plates. 

"Grayl,"  said  Rudley,  "do  you  remember  Steve 
Walliston?" 

"Very  well.  He  is  now  the  Governor  of  Oklahoma. 
Or  is  it  Idaho?" 

"Do  you  remember  that  dramatic  day  when  your 
father  held  him  head  down  in  the  rain-barrel,  with  the 
whole  school  crowd  watching?" 

"For  forcing  a  boy  under  in  the  swimming-pool. 
That  was  a  frightful  half-minute." 

"I  was  just  recalling  something  Steve  said.  It  came 
to  him  while  his  head  was  under.  He  didn't  think  about 
the  offense  he  had  committed  (he  did  some  thinking 
about  that  afterward),  and  he  didn't  think  about  the 
spectacular  act  of  punishment  of  which  he  was  the  sub 
ject.  What  he  thought  of  for  all  of  that  half -minute 
(if  it  was  that  long)  was  of  a  girl  he  knew  in  Granset. 
He  said  he  saw  her  face  as  vividly  as  if  she  had  been 
shining  through  that  black  water.  Speaking  of  your 
psychology,  what  do  you  make  of  that?" 

Walliston  was  always  thinking  of  girls,  I  suggested 
as  the  best  explanation  I  had.  Unless  you  wanted  to 
take  his  habit  of  always  doing  something  no  one  could 

5 


54  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

anticipate.  It  was  the  same  way  with  his  election  to 
the  Governorship. 

"Wasn't  that  act  of  your  father  rather  cruel?"  de 
manded  Mr.  Zorn. 

"Nonsense!"  cried  Rudley.  "That  was  the  one  thing 
to  do  with  Walliston.  Absolutely  the  one  thing.  Cruel? 
There  isn't  a  ...  Oh,  rot!  Why,  the  boys  worshiped 
the  'old  man* — literally  worshiped  him.  He  is — " 

"That  may  be,"  said  Mr.  Zorn,  tenaciously.  "But 
wasn't  the  act  needlessly  cruel?  And  wasn't  it  hazard 
ous  as  an  example?  Suppose  he  did  teach  that  one  boy 
— suppose  he  taught  all  the  boys — not  to  duck  comrades 
in  the  water.  What  else  did  he  teach  them?" 

Well,  we  all  fell  into  a  hot  discussion  as  to  sins  and 
punishments — a  futile  enough  discussion,  I  suppose,  but 
nevertheless  an  adventure,  illuminated  by  the  blazing 
vehemence  as  well  as  by  the  dramatic  silences  of  Zorn. 
I  recall  one  exposition  that  came  at  the  end  of  the 
thing. 

"There  is  only  one  sin,"  said  Zorn.  "All  other  so- 
called  sins  are  but  subdivisions  of  this  one  elemental, 
inclusive,  engulfing  offense  against  the  universe.  To 
measure  any  offense  ask  yourself,  How  selfish  is  it? 
The  answer  gives  you  its  measure  of  sinfulness.  Every 
other  measuring  process  is  mere  juggling — mere  word 
hypnotism.  If  you  are  living  in  selfishness  you  are  living 
in  sin.  Of  course,  this  is  too  simple  to  be  fashionable. 
It  isn't  tricky  enough,  it  isn't  peremptory  enough,  it 
spoils  the  fun  of  plastering  on  labels,  of  interfering,  and 
of  goading,  and  belittling,  and  befuddling  the  crowd. 
How  the  bellowing  reformers  do  love  their  words ! — their 
funny  names  that  have  taken  the  place  of  blood  and 
bones  and  quivering  fibers  of  imprisoned  brain!  How 
it  must  make  God  laugh!" 

He  turned  upon  me  his  savage  glance  of  inquiry. 

"Can't  you  imagine  God  roaring  with  laughter? — 
shouting  in  thunderous  enjoyment  of  the  strutting 


NEIGHBORS  55 

pomposity,  the  comical,  useless  industry,  the  cringing 
conformities  of  these  bewildered  maggots  spawned  on 
the  crust  of  a  certain  grain  of  sand  called  the  Earth?" 

"How  about  a  little  of  this  hen?"  suggested  Rud- 
ley,  his  knife  poised  and  his  glance  soothingly  fixed 
upon  Zorn. 

Zorn  shook  his  head  and  resumed  with  his  fork  the 
pursuit  of  a  fragment  of  potato. 

When  Rudley  and  Zorn  had  lighted  cigars  the  talk 
trailed  into  the  front  room,  where  Zorn  sat  quaintly  on 
the  saddle  in  first  attention  to  demands  of  his  tobacco. 
His  cigar  was  fat,  dark,  and  blunt,  some  brand  of  his 
own  habit.  His  way  of  smoking  was  startling.  Some 
times  he  used  the  weed  as  a  marker  in  diagramming  his 
contentions.  Then  again  he  would  begin  sucking  the 
thing,  with  a  fearful  ferocity,  sending  out  the  smoke 
in  puff  after  puff  until  he  became  all  but  invisible  in 
the  fumes,  and  when  he  would  again  start  to  speak  his 
sharp  voice  had  the  effect  of  coming  from  nowhere  in 
particular. 

It  was  while  he  was  hidden  in  one  of  these  fog-banks 
that  I  heard  the  ting  of  the  apartment  bell.  In  a  mo 
ment  Stokes  appeared  at  the  door,  singling  out  Zorn, 
and  pausing  as  if  to  appeal  for  attention. 

"The  man  with  the  glove,  Mr.  Zorn." 

At  this  Zorn  made  a  violent  assault  upon  his  cigar, 
looked  at  it  keenly  through  the  obscuration,  then  shot 
up  out  of  his  chair. 

I  surmised,  when  he  stalked  past  me,  that  he  simply 
had  gone  to  the  door,  but  presently,  after  the  sharp 
sound  of  the  door  closing,  I  realized  that  he  had  gone 
out. 

in 

"There  is  only  one  Zorn,"  said  Rudley,  obscurely. 
"I  was  just  thinking,"  I  said,  "that  there  seemed 
to  be  two  of  him — two  or  more." 


56  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"  I  know,"  Rudley  nodded.  "  I  know  what  you  mean. 
He  is  a  freak.  I  don't  understand  him  at  all.  Norse 
father  and  Scotch  mother — something  like  that.  Full 
of  explosives.  .  .  .  He  has  gone  away  now  with  a  man 
from  somewhere  over  on  Second  Avenue — a  man  with 
a  steel  hand  on  which  he  wears  a  glove.  You  heard 
Stokes  call  him  'the  man  with  the  glove.'  This  chap 
has  a  mother  who  is  subject  to  some  kind  of  seizure — 
a  strange  sort  of  crazy  fit — and  no  one  but  Zorn  can  do 
anything  with  her." 

I  asked  whether  he  was  a  doctor  or  a  healer. 

"No,  no!"  Rudley  laughed.  "It's  just  ...  I  don't 
know  what  it  is.  He  seems  to  get  mixed  up  with  things 
like  that.  Anybody,  you  know.  He  has  a  great  chum 
who  is  a  rabbi.  And  another  who  is  a  priest.  He  be 
longs  to  a  garment-workers'  union,  for  reasons  of  his 
own.  I  caught  him  behind  the  counter  of  a  bakeshop 
around  there  on  the  avenue  one  day  when  there  was 
sickness.  And  he  abuses  them  all — slashes  at  them  in 
the  most  terrific  way.  I've  seen  him  all  but  knock 
down  a  man  who  had  lost  his  job  by  boozing.  I  had  to 
interfere.  He's  out  there  in  the  street  now  .  .  .  running 
probably  .  .  .  very  likely  in  that  house  coat." 

Rudley  might  have  read  the  meaning  of  my  absorbed 
silence. 

"I  met  him  in  a  gambling-house.  .  .  ." 

It  was  all  coming  out.  The  incomprehensible  was 
unfolding  itself — turning  up  new  matter  for  perplexity. 
**Zorn,  too!"  was  my  first  thought.  But  I  couldn't 
make  this  fit.  No,  it  couldn't  be  that.  It  was  too  fan 
tastic  .  .  .  though  it  might  explain.  .  .  .  And  then  the 
next  thing  Rudley  told  me  began  to  seem  quite  the  in 
evitable  explanation. 

Rudley  was  leaning  forward,  his  elbows  on  his  knees, 
his  cigar  in  his  extended  hand. 

"I  never  found  out  how  he  got  in.  You  would  think 
any  sober  doorkeeper  .  .  .  There  was  some  good  trick. 


NEIGHBORS  57 

Anyway,  there  he  was  .  .  .  glaring  .  .  .  fascinated,  I 
thought.  Yes,  he  played — the  wheel,  and  the  cards, 
too — over  and  over  again.  He  couldn't  seem  to  do 
anything  but  win,  and  nobody  else  could  do  anything 
but  watch  him.  I  think  they  thought  there  was  some 
thing  diabolical  about  him.  Finally  he  staked  the  whole 
pile — and  lost.  Then  he  lighted  up — broke  out  in  a 
happy  grin.  You  might  have  thought  that  this  was 
what  he  had  been  feverishly  fighting  for. 

"I  was  standing  right  beside  him  when  he  turned 
away  with  that  extraordinary  smile.  He  looked  at  me 
and  I  looked  back.  All  he  said  was,  'I  understand.9 

"'What  is  it  you  understand?'  I  asked  him. 

"He  caught  me  by  the  arm  and  drew  me  away.  I 
don't  know  why  I  did  it.  ...  I  just  followed  along  with 
him,  out  of  the  place,  out  into  a  nasty  drizzle,  which  he 
didn't  seem  to  notice.  It  was  hard  to  keep  up  with 
him.  And  we  walked  for  an  hour  .  .  .  soaked  through 
at  last  .  .  .  talking,  arguing.  His  arms  shot  out.  He 
turned  on  me  at  one  point  and  took  me  by  the  shoul 
ders  .  .  .  shouting  at  me.  I  couldn't  persuade  him  that 
I  wasn't  a  victim — that  I  wasn't  steeped  in  it,  that  I 
wasn't  pretty  well  through  then.  To  advance  this  only 
made  him  worse.  If  I  had  the  disease  I  was  to  be 
pitied.  But  if  I  only  toyed  with  the  thing.  .  .  .  Oh,  the 
old  man  and  I  had  a  joyous  time,  I  can  tell  you. 

"We  wound  up  in  a  little  den  he  had  over  near  Stuy- 
vesant  Park.  I  was  looking  for  new  quarters.  The 
upshot  of  it  was — it's  quite  a  long  story — we  took  this 
apartment  together  about  two  months  later." 

"Did  he  tell  you  why  he  went  to  the — to  that  place?" 
I  asked. 

"Yes;  I  forgot  that.  Though  I  guessed  most  of  it. 
It  appears  that  he  had  run  across  some  one — some 
troubled  family.  He  knows  so  much  that  I  suppose  it 
infuriated  him  to  find  that  he  didn't  really  know  any 
thing  about  gambling.  He's  the  kind  of  man  who 


58  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

would  want  to  know  what  it  was  like — and  the  kind  of 
a  man  who  would  get  it  in  a  flash  .  .  .  that  is,  get  all  he 
could  get  without  feeling  the  .  .  .  well,  the  thing  that 
sends  a  man  back  to  it." 

"What  is  that  thing?"  I  asked,  with  no  attempt  to 
conceal  my  eagerness. 

"If  I  could  answer  that ..."  Rudley  laughed  derisive 
ly,  struck  a  match,  and  watched  it  burn  out.  "Yes, 
I'd  be  some  psychologist.  It  would  have  been  interest 
ing  to  ask  my  father  that  question  on  the  day  of  that 
affair  in  the  Chicago  wheat-pit." 

"You  must  know  what  I  mean.  What  did  you  want? 
Was  it  the  money?" 

He  turned  squarely,  but  his  look  went  past  me.  He 
was  trying,  honestly,  I  believe,  to  see  into  the  heart 
of  the  mystery — to  see  into  the  heart  of  himself. 

"No,"  he  said,  slowly,  "it  wasn't  the  money.  No. 
Money  never  stopped  the  gambling  hunger.  A  man 
thinks  it  will.  He  thinks  of  some  big  wad  of  money 
.  .  .  some  vaguely  tremendous  bunch  of  winnings.  But 
if  this  should  happen  it  would  only  throw  a  red  light 
over  the  game.  I've  tried  breaking  away  with  a  fat 
roll.  You  don't  need  to  have  some  one  whisper,  'This 
seems  to  be  your  night.'  That  whisper  is  already  in 
your  brain.  To  double  the  thousand — it  would  be  the 
same  with  a  million.  Good  God!  no!  It's  never  the 
money!  It  has  something  to  do  with  the  way  you  feel 
when  you're  waiting.  Can  you  understand  that?  The 
way  you  feel — it  can  be  a  kind  of  pain — an  agony,  a 
delirious,  delicious  agony  sometimes — when  you  are 
waiting — when  you  don't  know — when  all  the  wheels 
of  the  universe  are  spinning  around  you — and  you, 
little  you,  wishing  with  the  push  of  a  billion  volts,  are 
trying  to  make  them  obey  you.  .  .  .  Something  like  that. 
I  don't  know.  You're  in  the  philosophy  line,  Grayl. 
What  is  it?" 

He  got  up  and  walked  the  length  of  the  room  and  back, 


NEIGHBORS  59 

striding  strongly.  I  wondered  whether  he  really  had 
kicked  off  the  ball  and  chain. 

"It  seems  to  me,"  I  said,  "altogether  a  question  of 
what  you  want — what  you  want  most.  Evidently  you've 
decided  that  you  want  something  else  more  than  you 
want  the  devilish  thrill  of  a  game.  We've  all  got  to 
decide  some  time  or  other  which  thing  we  want  most. 
That  thing,  whatever  it  may  be,  marks  a  man's  destina 
tion.  Sounds  preachy.  But  you  asked  me  what  I 
thought." 

He  loomed  before  me,  as  if  to  block  escape,  and  then 
demanded : 

"What  do  you  want  most?" 

Something,  Heaven  knows  what,  had  brought  us  very 
close  for  a  moment,  so  that  each  was  speaking  from  the 
inside.  Yet  I  felt  frightfully  small  as  I  sat  huddled 
there  before  him.  If  there  had  been  anything  but  sheer 
humanity  in  his  eyes  at  that  moment,  I  should  have 
evaded  him. 

"Most?"  I  repeated,  in  a  rising  heat  of  feeling,  a  little 
dismayed  on  the  defensive.  "Well,  of  all  that  may  be 
called  possible  and  thinkable,  I  wish  most  to  get  the 
true  answer  to  a  great  question — and  to  write  it  as  it 
should  be  written." 

"You  don't  mean  the  gambling  game?" 

"I  mean  the  greatest  game  of  all — the  game  of  life." 

"Oh!  ...  I  see." 

It  was  plain  that  he  didn't  see,  and  also  that  this  ap 
peared  to  him  as  unnecessary. 

"Fame,"  he  said,  challengingly. 

"No.  Not  fame.  Something  real.  It  might  include 
fame." 

"And  you're  gambling  on  the  chance  of  winning  it," 
he  went  on,  without  moving.  "You're  staking  your 
life  on  it." 

"That  may  be,"  I  admitted.  "But  you've  got  to 
grant  me  this — since  you've  used  that  word — I  can  win 


60  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

only  by  benefiting  the  world.  I  sha'n't  be  taking  the 
winnings  from  any  one  else." 

As  I  write  I  can  see  how  grandiloquent  this  must  have 
sounded.  His  retort  was  milder  than  I  deserved. 

"I'm  not  so  sure  of  that.  One  of  the  things  that  make 
it  so  hard  to  win  fame,  I  suppose,  is  the  pressure  of  other 
competitors  for  the  same  stake.  But  never  mind.  That 
may  be  what  you  professors  call  an  academic  question. 
The  real  fact  is,  Grayl,  that  I  understand  you  better 
than  you  think  I  do.  I've  a  little  incentive  of  my  own.'* 

"You  don't  mean,"  I  gasped,  "that  you  are  looking  for 
fame?" 

He  laughed  genuinely,  and  the  pressure  lifted. 

"Let  me  show  you  something,"  he  said,  impulsively, 
indicating  that  I  should  follow  him,  which  I  did  in  a 
state  of  the  utmost  bewilderment. 

As  we  came  to  the  door  of  that  room  off  the  passage 
I  first  saw  his  couch,  laid  with  military  precision.  It 
was  not  until  we  were  within  the  room  that  the  jumble 
on  the  other  side  became  apparent.  ...  A  machine-shop, 
it  looked  like,  reduced  to  the  smallest  terms.  In  the 
focus  of  its  complexity  was  a  small  engine,  which  I 
rightly  estimated  as  a  motor. 

Rudley  threw  off  his  coat  and  banished  his  cigar. 

"Know  anything  about  mechanics?"  he  cried,  with 
something  of  exultation  in  his  voice. 

No  one  could  know  less,  I  told  him. 

Because  I  know  so  little  the  whole  of  that  bit  of  drama 
in  his  explanation  shone  grotesquely,  had  a  glamour  of 
that  romance  which  invests  invention  when  you  are  not 
too  close.  Closeness  must  make  a  difference.  It  is  like 
that  point  of  Hazen's.  "There  is  nothing  so  beautiful," 
he  said,  "as  an  insect — that  isn't  stinging  you." 

"An  entirely  new  rotary  principle,"  Rudley  told  me. 
There  was  a  lot  of  detail  in  his  explanation,  even  if  he 
tried  to  leave  out  the  technical  terms.  He  had  stum 
bled  on  it  in  his  work  as  an  engineer.  (So  he  is  an  en- 


NEIGHBORS  61 

gineer.)  Of  course  this  was  a  very  small  model — just  a 
gill  of  gas  over  here.  And  by  plugging  in  to  the  house 
current  he  could  omit  certain  elements  for  the  present 
and  test  the  essential  principle  perfectly. 

Suddenly  the  thing  was  going  .  .  .  humming  the  tune 
we  had  heard  through  the  walls! 

"Take  this  piece  of  wood/'  demanded  Rudley,  "and 
press  it  on  that  driving-shaft.  That  will  give  you  an 
idea  of  the  little  fellow's  punch." 

I  did  as  he  directed. 

He  laughed  gaily.  "Can't  stop  it,  eh?  That's 
power!  I  tell  you,  boy,  it  has  the  kick!  If  I  took  off 
the  muffler — which  would  make  me  a  nuisance  in  the 
house — I  could  show  you  still  more.  Now  imagine  that 
machine  multiplied  in  size  fifty — a  hundred — times. 
Imagine  it  in  the  air,  with  its  wings — there  isn't  a  thing 
in  Europe  that  could  touch  it." 

The  motor  hummed  on,  like  the  dominant  note  in 
Rudley's  oration. 

"Is  it  crooked  to  be  thinking  of  the  soul  of  this  while 
working  for  a  corporation  without  a  soul?  .  .  .  Down 
there  under  Broadway,  wading  through  Italians  and 
muck  and  splinters  of  New  York's  obstinate  backbone 
(with  the  entrails  laced  up  overhead)  . .  .  isn't  that  tough, 
when  I  want  to  be  flying  with  the  big  brother  of  this  at 
my  feet,  streaming  through  the  sky,  giving  it  a  real 
chance,  proving  it — proving  it  and  revolutionizing  the 
whole  motor  game?" 

I  peered  at  him,  with  my  own  breath  quickened.  He 
was  all  aglow — transfigured. 

"Of  course  I  wasn't  always  so  sure,"  he  went  on. 
"And  even  yet,  sometimes,  perhaps — especially,  I  might 
say,  just  before  going  to  bed — I  go  back  to  that  incident 
in  my  grandfather's  life.  He  was  a  thoroughly  practical 
man,  but  he  had  an  obsession — he  believed  that  per 
petual  motion  was  attainable.  And  year  after  year — 
like  this,  in  the  evening — he  worked  on  a  machine.  I 


62  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

once  saw  pieces  of  it.  I  believe  it  was  beautifully  made. 
He  was  in  no  hurry,  I  guess,  because  he  was  so  sure. 
Just  content  to  carve,  or  jammer  out,  or  polish  to  the 
greatest  conceivable  nicety  one  fragment  after  another. 
And  all  the  time,  my  grandmother  told  me,  his  face  be 
came  more  and  more  peaceful — that  was  her  word.  He 
must  have  been  splendidly  sure.  My  father  didn't  ridi 
cule  the  thing,  but  he  didn't  take  much  pains  to  conceal 
his  skepticism,  and  every  step  toward  certainty  was  to 
my  grandfather  a  step  toward  confronting  Wendell  with 
the  great  fact.  I  can  fancy  his  grunting,  triumphantly, 
Til  show  him!' 

"Late  one  night  my  grandmother  looked  into  the 
place  he  had  fixed  up  as  a  workshop  and  saw  him  sitting 
before  the  machine  in  rapt  contemplation.  The  thing 
was  going,  steadily,  smoothly,  silently.  My  grand 
mother  told  me  that  it  seemed  like  a  ghostly  thing  be 
cause  she  felt  that  there  should  be  some  sound,  and 
there  wasn't  a  whisper  of  friction — not  a  ghost  of  a 
whisper. 

"Then  my  grandmother  stood  up  and  began  putting 
away  certain  tools,  even  those  which  she  had  noticed 
that  he  always  left  out  there  on  the  bench. 

"'  Mother,'  he  said,  very  quietly  (she  told  me  this 
many  times),  'I've  done  it.  It's  finished.'  He  didn't 
exclaim,  'What  will  Wendell  say  now?'  or  anything  like 
that.  But  she  knew  what  he  was  thinking. 

"It  doesn't  do  for  a  wife  to  get  too  much  wrapped 
up  in  a  man's  adventures.  I  always  think  she  did  just 
the  right  thing — believed  in  him,  you  know,  but  didn't 
get  too  greatly  entangled  in  any  of  his  ideas.  When 
he  needed  her  she  was  always  right  there  with  sympathy 
and  encouragement  and  a  comfortable,  unassertive  re 
sponsiveness.  So  that  it  was  just  like  her  to  say,  simply, 
'I'm  glad,  Father!' 

"They  stood  there  for  several  minutes  while  the  big 
wheel  of  wood  and  steel,  and  all  the  smaller  wheels  in 


NEIGHBORS  63 

their  way,  went  round  and  round  and  round — without 
a  whisper. 

"Then  he  lighted  a  small  lamp  he  always  took  to  his 
room,  leaving  her  at  some  little  domestic  detail  she  had 
forgotten,  said,  'Good  night,  Mother!'  went  up  half  a 
dozen  steps,  and  came  down  again  to  go  over  and  kiss 
her — that  was  a  great  point  with  her — that  kiss.  He 
kissed  her  good  night  only  once  in  a  long  while;  so  that 
it  stood  out,  you  see.  Anyway,  she  dwelt  on  that. 
And  he  climbed  up  to  bed. 

"In  the  morning  when  she  went  in  to  wake  him  he 
was  cold.  He  died  believing  that  he  had  done  it.  Of 
course  .  .  .  hours  afterward  .  .  .  they  found  that  the 
machine  had  stopped  in  the  night.  But  he  didn't  know 
that " 

I  was  ashamed  of  the  tears  that  blurred  the  room  for 
a  moment. 

"Rudley,"  I  said,  "I'm  go-ing  away  to  think  over  that 
story." 

He  made  a  gesture  as  if  to  urge  me  to  stay,  but  said 
only  that  he  was  sorry  I  must  go. 

At  the  door  I  pledged  him  to  visit  us. 

IV 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  story  about  the  per 
petual-motion  grandfather  hung  in  the  front  of  my  mind 
while  I  tried  to  translate  Rudley  and  Zorn  to  Sarah  and 
Aunt  Paul.  Though  I  didn't  tell  the  story  itself,  I  have 
no  doubt  it  colored  my  recital  in  certain  ways.  It  had, 
indeed,  impressed  me  very  strongly  as  setting  out  a 
strange,  elemental  passion,  a  great  desire  that  seemed  to 
that  old  man  to  have  been  fulfilled,  but  that  was  deceived 
by  a  kind  of  derisive  fatality.  Yet  one  naturally  thought 
farther  than  that.  One  went  after  the  possible  corol 
laries,  the  possible  prophecy.  .  .  .  Not  only  the  possible 
prophecy  as  to  Rudley  or  any  other  one  creature,  but 


64  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

as  to  the  matter  of  an  inherent  irony  lurking  in  all 
desires. 

Sarah  listened  to  my  narrative  in  an  attentive  silence. 
It  was  Aunt  Paul  who  conducted  the  cross-examination 
— a  function  in  which  she  displays  superior  gifts.  It 
was  her  question  that  brought  out  the  fact  that  I  had 
explained  Sarah's  blunder — how  satisfactorily  I  was  not 
assured. 

When  it  came  to  the  last  stroke,  the  invitation  to  the 
neighborly  visit,  I  found  it  equally  difficult  to  estimate 
the  impression  created. 

"If  you  didn't  fix  a  time,"  said  Aunt  Paul,  "I  doubt 
if  he  will  come." 

"Why  shouldn't  he  come?"  I  demanded. 

"Well,"  said  Aunt  Paul,  "detached  men  have  a  way 
of  keeping  out  of  entanglements.  You  have  to  trap 
them." 

I  insisted  that  this  sounded  like  the  peep  of  a  disap 
pointed  social  angler.  Why  should  there  be  any  trap 
about  it?  If  Rudley  didn't  wish  to  call  he  could  go 
hang. 

"I  don't  think  he'll  come,"  said  Sarah. 

I  had  been  watching  Sarah.  There  have  been  so 
few  concrete  opportunities  for  getting  at  her  later 
psychology,  and  she  has  been  so  elusive  when  I  have 
pounced  on  an  opportunity,  that  I  had  excellent  reason 
for  any  alertness. 

What  soon  became  apparent  (it  was  at  breakfast 
again)  was  that  her  emotions  at  this  juncture  were  more 
concerned  with  another  matter. 

She  has  seen  Laura  Sherrick. 

She  has  been  doing  a  lot  more  than  that — investigat 
ing  the  Red  Cross,  getting  acquainted  at  a  settlement 
house,  crying  at  a  war  matinee,  taking  tea  in  a  studio, 
buying  a  taffeta  gown  at  Buddington's,  and  so  on — but 
the  meeting  at  last  with  Laura  Sherrick  I  understood  to 
be  the  dominating  incident  of  the  interval. 


NEIGHBORS  C5 

My  image  of  Laura  Sherrick  had  been  built  from  frag 
ments  of  letters  and  comment  contributed,  often  grudg 
ingly,  I  thought,  by  Sarah  during  a  period  of  several 
/ears — beginning  sometime  toward  the  end  of  her  college 
days.  I  had  indeed  seen  a  photograph  of  her  from  which 
I  gathered  that  she  wore  her  hair  bobbed  off  in  some 
way.  Yet  she  didn't  look  at  all  like  the  short-haired 
type.  A  flashing  face  came  back  to  me,  but  the  effect 
was  too  misty  to  be  of  much  service  now.  There  could 
be  no  doubt  that  she  was  some  sort  of  a  radical  person. 
Certainly  the  quotations  had  suggested  that  much  at  the 
time  I  heard  them.  And  Sarah  had  uniformly  seemed  to 
respond  to  the  quality  of  her,  whatever  it  was. 

I  remember  asking  Sarah  whether  Miss  Sherrick  was 
married.  Her  answer  was  that  of  course  she  wasn't. 
Just  why  she  of  course  wasn't  did  not  appear.  But  so 
much  else  didn't  appear  that  I  felt  no  compulsion  as  to 
filling  in  such  details.  On  another  occasion  I  asked  what 
she  did,  whether  she  was  a  business  woman  or  a  plain 
parasite  of  some  description.  Upon  this  point  Sarah 
was  entirely  vague,  probably  because  she  didn't  know. 
Yet  she  ventured  the  opinion  that  she  was  a  sort  of 
secretary  to  somebody — it  seemed  amazing  that  Sarah 
shouldn't  have  acquired  more  illuminating  information. 

The  account  of  this  meeting  with  Miss  Sherrick  which 
Sarah  unfolded  to  Aunt  Paul  and  me  had  the  tone  and 
detail  appropriate,  as  I  took  it,  to  a  domestically  public 
disclosure.  I  knew  that  both  my  aunt  and  myself  in 
dividually  would  get  more — if  this  happened  to  be  con 
venient. 

Miss  Sherrick,  it  seems,  lives  in  an  apartment  with 
two  other  young  women,  one  of  them  an  actress  who 
sleeps  all  the  morning  and  has  her  breakfast  in  bed 
(there  is  a  colored  housekeeper),  and  the  other  a  depart 
ment-store  buyer — rather  a  chunky  person  who  swears 
in  a  funny  way,  smokes  cigarettes  through  a  gold  holder, 
and  whose  manner  of  talking,  when  she  is  wound  up, 


66  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

is  a  perfect  scream.  (Sarah  uses  only  little  of  feminine 
slang  or  frayed  girlish  colloquialisms,  so  that  there  is 
in  any  reckless  lapse  always  the  effect  of  juvenility.  I 
don't  mean  that  she  ever  could  begin  a  sentence  with, 
"Listen.  .  .  .!"  But  sorority  habits  linger,  and  she  can 
quite  fluently  confirm  the  theory  that  there  is  a  sex  color 
in  jargon.) 

Sarah  had  taken  dinner  with  Laura  Sherrick  at  some 
sort  of  a  basement  place  where  odd-looking  people  fore 
gather.  It  was  a  very  good  dinner  and  Laura  had  been 
wonderful.  For  the  first  time  Sarah  had  begun  to 
understand  why  Laura,  at  the  end  of  her  second  year  in 
college,  had  impulsively  said,  "I'm  through  with  this 
drivel!" — a  matter  communicated  in  one  of  the  first 
letters  Sarah  had  received  from  her.  They  talked  over 
their  first  meeting,  which  happened  at  one  of  those  vil 
lages  that  are  called  "summer  places,"  when  Laura  dis 
played  such  quick  and  hearty  interest  in  what  may  well 
have  seemed  the  quaintness  of  father's  Academy. 

Laura  asked  Sarah  pointedly  what  work  she  was  going 
to  do.  She  showed  no  astonishment  that  Sarah  hadn't 
a  fixed  idea,  yet  her  assumptions,  I  have  no  doubt,  were 
not  less  influential  on  that  account.  Apparently  she 
had  searched  Sarah's  mind.  What  she  found  was,  of 
course,  no  part  of  Sarah's  story. 

As  for  Sarah  herself,  she  had  emerged  from  that  din 
ner  with  the  knowledge  that  Laura  Sherrick  was  an 
Individualist,  without  finding  out  what  an  Individualist 
was.  Evidently  she  believed  it  was  something  quite 
the  opposite  of  the  Aunt  Portia  Rowning  sort  of  person. 
Anyway,  there  were  a  great  many  things  for  which  Laura 
Sherrick  had  no  respect  at  all.  Millionaire  rows,  for  in 
stance,  and  fashionable  churches,  and  padrones,  and 
boards  of  aldermen,  and  sweat-shops,  and  endowment- 
strangled  colleges,  and  prisons — and  war. 

They  had  talked  quite  a  lot  about  war.  And  it  was 
wonderful  to  hear  her  way  of  putting  it  ...  wonderful. 


NEIGHBORS  67 

Aunt  Paul  turned  to  me.     "Is  this  Socialism,  Anson?" 

I  insisted  that  an  Individualist  couldn't  be  a  Socialist. 
44 It  sounds/'  I  said,  "more  like  an  amateur  brand  of 
Anarchism." 

Sarah  looked  startled  for  a  moment.  Then  she 
laughed. 

"  Oh  no !"  she  said.  "  She  knows  the  greatest  Anarchist 
of  them  all.  Let  me  see,  her  name  is  ...  Anna  Jassard. 
She  knows  her  very  well.  But  I'm  sure  Laura  isn't  an 
Anarchist.  She  is  an  Individualist." 

Sarah  stuck  to  that.  .  .  .  Individualist,  without  ex 
planation,  and  without  evil,  of  course. 

The  thing  gave  me  a  most  uneasy  feeling. 

It  stirred  up  the  whole  question  of  Sarah.  I  suppose 
Sarah  is  not  less  a  question  because  she  is  my  sister. 
She  may  be  very  shrewd,  not  at  all  rattle-brained,  not 
at  all  gullible  or  footless.  But  she  is  a  girl.  She  knows 
so  much  that  all  the  old  safeguards  look  grotesque. 
Yet  she  has  experienced  so  little  that  the  scrap-heap  of 
safeguards  begins  to  inspire  a  misgiving.  It  is  all  very 
well  to  take  women  off  their  ancient  car  tracks  and  make 
jitneys  of  them.  They  may  run  straight  enough.  But 
in  heavy  traffic  the  opportunities  for  wabbling  catch 
one's  breath. 

This  is  the  American  way — to  give  them  lectures  and 
latch-keys,  and  trust  to  God. 

As  for  Laura  Sherrick,  I  suppose  Sarah  decided  that 
she  wasn't  an  Anarchist  because  it  didn't  appear  that 
she  had  a  bomb  beside  the  powder-puff  in  her  hand-bag. 

And  then  here  was  Aunt  Paul  brushing  aside  my 
anxieties. 

"One  of  the  things  you  will  discover  about  New 
York,"  she  said,  "is  that  most  people  take  it  out  in 
talk.  You  don't  want  to  trust  either  its  angels  or  its 
devils.  Neither  sort  is  likely  to  live  up  to  your  expec 
tations.  Most  of  them  are  looking  for  the  Convenient 
Life.  Secretly  we're  all  Individualists,  of  one  sort  or 


68  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

another.  Some  of  us  like  to  raise  a  talk-row  about  it. 
That's  where  the  difference  comes  in.'* 

"You  make  it  seem  very  simple,"  I  said. 

"Well,"  pursued  Aunt  Paul,  "if  you  should  happen 
to  decide  that  it  is  simple  it  would  help  keep  you  from 
getting  thin.  I've  met  a  lot  of  these  rabid-talking 
people — people  who  object  to  everything,  and  they  all 
wanted  their  meals  like  the  rest  of  us." 

"Laura  Sherrick  isn't  a  bit  rabid,"  suggested  Sarah. 
"Not  at  all.  You  would  like  her  tremendously.  .  .  . 
And,  really,  you  would  be  sure  to  like  Miss  Bransol 
(that's  the  buyer  woman).  You  see,  the  actress  doesn't 
get  home  till  very  late,  of  course,  and  we  three  were 
there  together  until  my  time  for  going — " 

"Which  was  .  .  .?"  I  interjected,  like  a  crafty  parent. 

"At  ten  o'clock,  when  Laura  walked  with  me  to  our 
corner.  Miss  Bransol  is  not  an  Individualist.  You 
would  think  they  might  spat  over  it.  But  they  don't, 
I  fancy.  Anyway,  Miss  Bransol  announces,  'Me  for 
the  corporations/  and  other  pleasantries  like  that,  with 
out  any  signs  of  an  explosion  that  you  could  notice." 

"The  successfully  single,"  murmured  Aunt  Paul. 

"A  pretty  bunch!"  I  cried,  with  what  was  intended 
for  a  despairing  accent. 

It  was  two  days  later  that  Sarah  came  into  my  room 
with  a  look  in  her  face  that  suggested  something  im 
pending. 

Of  course  at  first  she  said  something  about  the  Book. 
Then  she  looked  at  me,  with  those  long  lashes  of  hers 
lined  up  close  together. 

"Do  you  know,  Anson,"  she  said,  "you  really  have  a 
fine  head." 

"What  are  you  getting  at?"  I  asked. 

"And  the  kind  of  eyes  that  women  like." 

"If  you  were  capable  of  actual  observation,"  I  said, 
"you  would  have  noticed  that  I  don't  care  to  be  inter 
rupted." 


NEIGHBORS  69 

"But  the  most  remarkable  thing  about  you  is  that 
you  are  so  innocent.  I  often  think  about  it." 

"Do  you?"  I  snapped  at  her.  "How  absorbingly 
impressive!  Would  you  mind  doing  your  thinking  else 
where  for  a  little  while?" 

"  I  mean  it,  old  man.  Innocent.  Are  all  philosophers 
innocent?  Laura  Sherrick  says  they're  all  bachelors — 
Spinoza,  Schopenhauer,  Kant,  Spencer,  Nietzsche — I've 
forgotten  the  others." 

"I've  no  doubt,"  I  said,  "that  your  head  will  be  filling 
up  with  Laura  Sherrick  stuff." 

"There's  something  nice  about  your  being  innocent. 
I  don't  mean  that  solemn  side  of  you.  I  don't  mean 
what  Waddy  meant  when  he  called  you  'the  holy  Grayl.' 
No.  I  mean  that  it's  sort  of  comforting  to  see  that  even 
a  man  can  know  a  lot  and  be  grown  up,  and  yet — " 

"What  are  you  driving  at?"  I  demanded.  "I  like  to 
hear  you  talk,  even  when  you  talk  nonsense,  and  it  is 
immensely  comforting  to  be  a  source  of  amusement  to 
you,  but  just  now  I  am  occupied,  as  you  might  have 
remarked  if  you  had  cared  to." 

"I  know,  Anson,"  she  said,  dropping  into  a  chair. 
"  I'm  coming  to  something.  But  if  I  didn't  tell  you  now 
about  your  innocence,  and  how  much  I  like  it,  how  do 
I  know  that  I  shouldn't  forget  to  mention  it?  You  see, 
there  is  something  catching  about  your  research  habits. 
Besides,  some  one  has  got  to  analyze  you.  You  can't 
do  it  yourself.  And  you  are  a  *  document'  like  the  rest 
of  us.  How  do  you  know  that  if  I  could  dissect  you, 
somehow,  tremendously  important  facts  about  the  *  so- 
called  human  race '  would  not  be  revealed  to  an  astonished 
world?" 

"Keep  right  on,"  I  said,  "until  you  are  quite  ready 
to  tell  me  what  this  is  all  about." 

"Here  you  are  on  the  way  to  the  appalling  age  of 
twenty-seven.  It's  funny,  but  I  can't  remember  when 

you  didn't  seem  to  be  old.     You  were  old  when  you  ex- 

6 


70  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

plained  to  me  the  why  of  a  kite.  You  were  old — dread- 
fully  old — when  you  unfolded  the  science  of  a  wood- 
chuck  trap.  You  must,  I  think,  have  been  at  least  nine 
when  you  outlined  so  beautifully  (I'm  not  joking)  why 
only  one  star  stayed  still  while  all  the  others  kept  on 
being  somewhere  else." 

"Oh  come!"  I  said.     "Quit  it." 

"  Of  course  you  showed  your  great  age  when  you  illus 
trated  the  right  way  of  nailing  on  a  shingle.  It  was  too 
bad  you  smashed  your  finger.  But  you  made  a  good 
point  of  that,  I  remember,  after  mother  had  finished 
with  the  peroxide  and  the  bandage.  Then  you  know 
how  venerable  you  were  when  you  made  it  clear  why  the 
bride  always  stood  on  the  left  of  the  bridegroom  at  the 
altar.  You  weren't  quite  sure  why  they  threw  old  shoes 
after  the  carriage,  but  you  'covered'  wonderfully  on 
that,  too.  You  were  oldest,  though,  a  good  deal  older 
than  you  are  now,  when  you  came  back  after  your 
Freshman  year.  By  that  time  you  were  away  past  the 
chloride  of  sodium  pleasantries  at  the  table.  You  had 
new  ones,  planned  particularly  for  my  benefit.  You  even 
had  a  notion,  I  believe,  of  stumping  father.  And  pres 
ently  you  were  pointing  out  the  holes  in  sociology — you 
had  decided,  I  believe,  to  let  '  trig '  and  Assyriology  and 
some  other  things  stay  pretty  much  as  they  were — and 
you  knew  queer  facts  about  Pragmatism  and  the  New 
Psychology.  The  puzzling  thing  is  that  nothing  of  all 
that  spoiled  your  innocence  at  all." 

When  Sarah  goes  on  like  this  I  know  by  long  experi 
ence  that  she  has  been  reading  something  or  has  fallen 
in  with  somebody  or  other,  that  the  ready  tinder  of  her 
feminine  equivalent  for  a  sense  of  humor  has  been  joy 
ously  ignited  in  expectation  of  getting  a  "rise"  out  of 
me.  She  always  has  regarded  me  as  fair  game.  She 
thinks  she  knows  me  through  and  through. 

"Which  crowd  was  it  this  time?"  I  asked  her. 

"Crowd.  .  .?"  she  fenced. 


NEIGHBORS  71 

"You've  run  into  some  new  herd.  You  may  not  be 
transparent,  Sarah,  as  an  organism,  but  there  is  some 
thing  very  simple  about  your  expedients." 

"You  see,  you  insist  on  being  old,"  said  Sarah,  her 
knees  crossed,  that  round  chin  of  hers  resting  in  her  hand. 
"Of  course  I've  seen  people.  I'm  seeing  people  all  the 
time.  I  had  luncheon  to-day  at  the  Women's  City 
Club,  away  up  in  the  air  where  you  can  see  the  kingdoms 
of  the  earth.  But  that  wasn't  what  reminded  me  how 
innocent  you  are — though  it  might  have  helped.  What 
really  reminded  me  was  looking  over  the  men  at  that 
Preparedness  meeting  last  night." 

"And  are  you  prepared  now?"  I  asked. 

"Aunt  Portia's  friend,  Mrs.  Kenlow,  introduced  me 
to  a  number  of  people.  They  weren't  all  for  prepared 
ness,  by  any  means.  There  was  a  lot  of  stiff  talk.  Isn't 
it  astonishing  what  a  muddle  difference  of  opinion  makes? 
There  was  one  man  there,  a  queer,  excitable  little  man, 
who  kept  saying:  *  What  you  call  being  prepared,  getting 
the  guns  ready,  is  just  plain  militarism.  You  can't  make 
anything  else  out  of  it.  If  you  get  guns  ready  you  will 
shoot  them  off,  sooner  or  later.'  His  ears  got  very  red 
when  he  said  this  and  he  kept  on  looking  as  if  he  were 
going  to  cry.  The  man  who  captured  me  was  a  splendid 
big  fellow  with  the  most  adorable  smile  you  can  imagine, 
and  the  most  fascinating  kind  of  business-like  earnest 
ness,  who  made  it  all  so  plain  and  so  necessary  that 
I  couldn't  see  how  any  reasonable  person  could  help 
feeling  that  we  should  take  better  precautions.  I'm  for 
being  ready,  hard.  Of  course  Laura  Sherrick  looks  at  it 
differently,  very  differently.  I  wish  she  had  been  there. 
I  wish  you  had  been  there. 

"But  this,"  Sarah  went  on,  "isn't  the  main  point  of 
what  I  came  in  to  see  you  about." 

"You'll  zigzag  to  it  by  and  by,"  I  suggested. 

"The  thing  I  really  wanted  to  tell  you  is  that  I've 
asked  your  Zorn  friend  to  dinner." 


72  THE   GREAT  DESIRE 

"Zorn?  ...  to  dinner?" 

Sarah  laughed  appreciatively.  She  thoroughly  likes 
plumping  a  thing  of  this  sort. 

"He  was  over  in  a  corner.  It  was  the  millionth 
chance,  but  Mr.  Selaway,  who  was  talking  to  me  about 
labor  unions,  happened  to  know  him.  The  moment  I 
heard  the  name  something  you  said  about  his  looks 
came  back  to  me.  Somehow  I  knew  in  a  flash  that  he 
was  the  man  next  door/* 

"And  you  promptly  asked  him  to  dinner?" 

"No,  foolish!  I  promptly  asked  him  what  he  thought 
about  the  question  of  the  meeting.  'The  question  is 
exactly  as  wide  as  the  Atlantic,'  he  said.  That's  all  I 
could  get  out  of  him  on  that.  I  had  the  feeling  that  he 
was  rather  contemptuous  of  me  as  a  mere  female.  He 
changed  a  little  when  I  identified  myself  for  him.  In 
fact,  he  looked  at  me  again,  which  it  seemed  at  first  he 
might  never  happen  to  do.  'GrayPs  sister?  Well,  well!' 
— and  so  on.  Then  we  really  began  to  talk.  I  believe  he 
actually  likes  me." 

"And  so  you  asked  him  to  dinner?" 

"You  must  have  noticed  how  impossible  it  is  to  think 
of  him  as  liking  anybody.  Hasn't  he  a  deliciously  savage 
look?  His  disagreeableness  filled  me  with  curiosity. 
And  I  was  afraid  you  would  never  help  along  a  chance 
of  meeting  him  again.  Anyway,  it  just  came  right. 
And  I  asked  him.  And  he  said  he  would  come." 

"When  is  this  to  happen?" 

"  Of  course  I  have  to  talk  with  Aunt  Paul  before  fixing 
the  night." 

"And  when  are  you  going  to  consult  me?" 

"About  what?" 

"About  asking  Rudley." 

She  answered  my  look  quite  steadily.  Perhaps  she 
began  to  realize  how  eccentric  her  impulse  had  been. 
But  she  was  contriving  to  ignore  that — unless  she  had 
worked  out  a  deliberate  plan.  The  Sarah  of  the  city 


NEIGHBORS  73 

is  even  more  difficult  to  figure  out  than  that  other 
Sarah  of  the  Naugaway  Valley. 

"You  know  the  way  I  feel,"  she  said,  coolly.  "He 
would  find  a  way  not  to  come." 

"Nonsense!"  I  said.     "He'll  come." 

There  was,  in  fact,  nothing  complicated  about  it. 
We  are  to  have  two  guests  to  dinner  on  Wednesday 
night. 


I  feel  an  awe  in  writing  of  that  meeting  between 
Sarah  and  Rudley.  It  may  be  a  platitude  to  say 
that  a  germ  of  the  momentous  lies  in  any  human 
meeting.  Every  thought  must  of  course  be  a  platitude 
from  some  angle.  But  these  elemental  facts  prick  us 
sometimes  with  the  sharpness  of  an  impinging  blade. 
Maybe  such  circumstances  are  more  like  a  caught 
electric  current  that  suddenly  sends  an  incandescence 
into  our  filaments.  In  a  flash  we  have  a  luminous 
apprehension.  Thought  and  feeling  melt  in  emotion, 
and  we  know.  .  .  . 

Despite  that  whimsical  pretense  of  reservation  in 
which  a  man  says  that  he  may  know  facts  about  a 
woman,  but  never  can  really  understand  her,  I  should 
have  said,  under  the  right  sort  of  challenge,  that  I  was 
as  thoroughly  acquainted  with  Sarah  as  I  well  could 
be  with  any  one.  When  Hazen  quoted  the  great  ento 
mologist  as  saying  that  he  knew  all  about  ants  that  it 
was  possible  to  know  without  being  an  ant,  I  remember 
thinking  that  there  was  a  pretty  good  parallel  in  the 
matter  of  a  man's  interrogatory  attitude  toward  the 
other  sex.  Nevertheless,  Eckering  gave  me  a  little  more 
of  assurance  by  what  he  said  of  monism  and  "proto 
plasmic  oneness."  Individual  differences,  he  maintained, 
were  of  the  most  superficial  kind,  regardless  of  sex  or 
breed,  when  compared  with  basic  likenesses. 

But  when  I  looked  at  Sarah's  face  as  she  shook  hands 


74  THE   GREAT  DESIRE 

with  Rudley  I  knew  that  I  was  just  a  masculine  blun 
derer. 

I  am  sure  she  had  never  looked  like  that  before. 

She  has  soft  eyes;  large,  I  should  say,  with  a  bright 
ness  that  does  not  seem  to  come  from  the  surface.  They 
seem  translucent  in  an  unusual  degree.  Her  look  glows 
from  within  them,  and  the  fibrous  gray  and  green  and 
mauve  that  blend  in  the  nameless  hue  of  the  literal  fact 
have  a  light  that  leaps  straight.  The  thing  that  travels 
on  that  most  potent  wireless  known  to  nature  seems  to 
contradict  the  softness.  ...  I  don't  know  how  it  should 
be  put,  but  the  brilliance  seems  to  me  wonderfully 
liquid,  not  only  as  to  the  dark  pool  of  the  pupil,  but  as 
to  the  flash  of  the  whole  effect. 

When  she  looked  at  Rudley  the  difference  was  not  so 
much  a  mere  matter  of  slight,  exquisitely  slight,  suffusion 
and  that  little  flow  of  heightened  color  in  the  skin  of  the 
upper  part  of  her  face  that  gives  such  a  changed  quality 
to  the  eyes — not  so  much  a  heightening  as  a  transmuta 
tion,  mysterious  to  me  and  in  a  curious  way  thrilling. 
Her  lips — they  have  a  free  curve  that  is  full  of  vagaries 
— showed  a  deeper  pink  than  usual,  and  their  parting 
was  amused,  or  defiant,  or  simply  expectant — I  couldn't 
have  said  which.  Even  that  amber  brown  of  her  hair 
(she  has  no  pride  with  it,  no  tricks  of  exploitation  that 
I  ever  have  detected,  being  content,  evidently,  to  have 
it  bound  rather  than  conquered)  became  an  appearance 
which  I  seemed  never  before  to  have  estimated — never 
before  to  have  seen. 

She  was  wearing  that  new  gown.  If  the  lobster  palace 
was  a  proper  reflection  it  is  in  the  mode,  though  I  think 
one  might  say  that  it  just  escaped  being  as  shocking  as 
the  mode  appears  to  advise.  Perhaps  Sarah  herself  is 
the  extenuation.  (If  Jimmy  Kayne  were  here  he  would 
say  that  she  looked  like  "a  regular  girl.")  At  all  events, 
that  shimmery  Nile-green  affair  didn't  hide  Sarah's 
throat  and  shoulders  nor  the  round  litheness  of  her  arms, 


NEIGHBORS  75 

and  there  is  no  occasion  to  deny  that  God  devised  her 
handsomely.  From  head  to  foot  she  had  an  effect  of 
having  flowered  magically  into  maturity. 

I  suppose  I  never  had  thought  of  Sarah  as  female. 
Possibly  family  closeness  suspends  or  delays  the  sense  of 
such  a  matter.  To  see  her  romping  in  overalls,  shinning 
up  trees,  crawling  through  hedges,  shoveling  snow,  in 
flicting  the  half-Nelson  on  a  freckled  boy,  or  vaulting 
a  blood-curdling  orbit  with  a  clothes-pole,  scarcely  pre 
pared  me  to  expect  that  she  ever  would  be  any  different. 
Even  in  her  grown-up  state,  seeing  her  handle  a  class 
in  first-year  French  was  no  more  differentiating  in  its 
suggestions  than  seeing  her  humiliate  some  one  at 
tennis.  She  was  always  just  Sarah. 

Evidently  that  needed  touch  was  Rudley. 

His  hand  was  quick  in  its  clasp,  almost  perfunctorily 
so,  one  might  have  said.  There  must  have  been  some 
thing  like  embarrassment  in  the  meeting  under  the  cir 
cumstances.  It  was  his  look  that  lingered  in  the  greet 
ing,  and  I  am  not  likely  to  forget  that  look,  either.  It 
helped  me  to  understand  Sarah,  to  objectify  him  more 
completely  as  a  masculine  image,  to  realize  that  I  have 
lived  much  in  a  dream  world  with  painted  scenery. 

Zorn  having  elected  to  wear  an  archaic  frock-coat  (as 
old,  I  believe,  as  the  one  my  father  saves  for  funerals), 
Rudley  chose  the  informality  of  a  dark  sack-suit,  thus 
supporting  Aunt  Paul's  strategy  in  forbidding  me  to 
hazard  dinner  clothes. 

In  range  of  Rudley  I  might  surely  have  been  forgiven 
for  consciousness  of  a  disparity  which,  while  it  was  not 
crushing — if  it  could  be  that  a  cripple  wouldn't  last — 
nevertheless  gave  me  one  of  those  momentary  twinges 
of  torturing  envy  which  no  opiates  of  philosophy  can 
soften  to  the  broken  in  the  presence  of  the  straight. 

It  fitted  Rudley's  boyish  bigness  that  he  should  so 
soon  be  flinging  at  Sarah  that  she  mustn't  absent- 
mindedly  call  him  "Biff."  She  came  back  with  some- 


76  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

thing — I've  forgotten  precisely  what  it  was — that 
finished,  so  far  as  speech  went,  the  recognition  of  the 
past  happening.  If  I  were  Rudley  I  think  that  hap 
pening  might  still  rankle.  Perhaps  he  has  acquired  a 
facility  in  forgetting. 

Zorn  had  seemed  restless  when  he  first  came,  as  if  re 
sentful  of  an  ordeal  he  might  have  avoided;  not,  I  fancy, 
with  that  simple  misgiving  as  to  being  bored  which  shines 
so  plainly  in  some  people,  but  rather  as  by  a  disturbed 
preoccupation  or  some  obsessing  anxiety. 

He  surveyed  my  aunt's  dimensions  with  transparent 
astonishment.  It  was  as  if  he  were  saying,  "You  fat 
creature!"  Had  he  remained  silent  you  would  have 
felt  that  he  actually  had  said  it.  What  he  did  say  as 
he  hovered  before  her  might  well  have  been  quite  as 
disconcerting  to  any  one  else. 

"Have  you  children,  too?"  he  asked,  in  his  peremptory 
way. 

"No,"  said  my  aunt,  cheerily,  "not  yet.     Have  you?" 

Zorn  looked  at  her  fixedly  and  shook  his  head.  "  I've 
never  married.  ..." 

"We're  quits!"  cried  my  aunt.     "Neither  have  I." 

Zorn's  face  underwent  one  of  those  queer  grimaces 
with  which  he  fills  an  instant's  interval.  "I  suppose 
we  all  ought  to  have  children,"  he  said,  staring  at  the 
wall  over  my  aunt's  shoulder.  "  Parenthood  does  some 
thing  valuable  for  the  souls  of  the  parents.  But  then 
there  are  the  children.  Being  born  isn't  so  necessary 
to  them." 

"I've  known  them  to  grow  up  and  say  that,"  remarked 
my  aunt. 

"A  scientific  man,"  continued  Zorn  (still  looking  at  the 
wall),  "once  said  of  photography  that  he  would  like  it 
better  if  it  weren't  for  the  pictures.  But  then  he  was 
a  scientific  man.  I  can  sympathize  with  him  to  an 
extent.  Birth  might  be  less  questionable  but  for  the 
conditions  of  living." 


NEIGHBORS  77 

"You  will  feel  better  about  it,"  returned  Aunt  Paul, 
"when  you've  had  your  dinner." 

The  flow  of  this  grotesque  bit  of  dialogue  was,  indeed, 
checked  by  the  image  of  Hilda  between  the  curtains. 

When  presently  we  all  were  at  the  round  table — a 
favoring  device  when  there  is  an  odd  number — I  could 
see  that  Zorn  was  disposed  to  have  second  thoughts 
about  my  aunt  ...  for  example,  that  she  might  be  some 
thing  more  than  a  corpulent  organism.  And  my  aunt, 
while  piqued,  I  dare  say,  by  the  oddity  of  Zorn,  and  in 
fluenced  by  a  natural  sense  of  something  in  him  that 
deserved  response  where  it  did  not  demand  agility, 
was  plainly  under  the  influence  of  an  antecedent  curios 
ity  about  Rudley.  .  .  .  There  was  no  Sarah  to  make  Zorn 
imperative.  Any  sardonic  pleasantry  about  the  Single 
grows  tenuous  enough  in  the  presence  of  the  Elemental 
Picture.  I  wondered  whether  my  aunt's  mind  was  doing 
that  which  my  mind  was  doing,  admiring  and  resenting 
Rudley  at  the  same  moment — resenting  any  glance  he 
gave  Sarah;  resenting  the  quick  easiness  of  both  of  them, 
the  sudden  facile  audacity  fledged  by  their  mere  near 
ness.  Seeing  him  there,  laughing,  tossing  light  words, 
or  speaking  with  that  warm,  sincere,  magnetic  inflection 
that  seems  to  be  as  characteristic  as  his  energetic  hu 
mor — above  all,  seeing  the  high,  unhampered  confidence 
shining  in  him,  gave  me  a  sharp  turn.  I  could  hear  my 
thought  saying:  "You  don't  know  this  man  at  all.  He 
hasn't  been  proved  innocent.  The  man  who  sits  by 
Sarah  should  be  as  clean  as  Sarah.  What  is  the  real 
measure  of  the  man  you  have  connived  at  pushing  into 
her  path?  A  gambler  .  .  .  with  a  story  clanking  out  of 
his  past.  How  do  you  know  that  the  unknown  part  of 
him  is  not  worse  than  the  known  part — so  much  worse 
that  to  have  him  here,  with  Sarah,  exercising,  perhaps, 
a  charm  that  has  some  sinister  quality  behind  it,  may 
not  amount  to  a  monstrous  folly?  Are  you  really  as 
innocent  as  Sarah  says  you  are?" 


78  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

And  yet  I  knew  that  I  liked  him.  There  seems  to  be 
no  doubt  that  Sarah  likes  him.  If  Aunt  Paul's  glances 
and  challenges  did  not  mean  liking,  they  bore  the  marks 
of  a  real  interest. 

My  aunt  has  a  trick  (the  crafty  psychoanalysts  have 
tried  to  reduce  the  expedient  to  a  science)  of  setting 
people  going,  by  questions  or  expressions  of  opinion 
in  themselves  as  simple  and  plausible  as  a  clock 
key,  and  then  of  watching  their  wheels  go  round. 
Not  necessarily  in  any  disrespect.  She  wants  to  know 
what  time  it  is  with  them.  Her  secondary  process 
is  much  more  incisive,  and  constitutes  the  real  point 
in  her  game.  I  should  have  to  use  another  image  to 
explain  that  this  secondary  process  seems  to  consist  in 
picking  out  of  inconsequential  things  they  say  fragments 
that  go  to  explain  the  hidden  parts  of  them — parts  hid 
den,  perhaps,  even  from  themselves.  This  might  sound 
as  if  my  aunt  were  a  conscious  psychiatrist,  or  what 
ever  such  an  experimenter  might  be.  Of  course  I  mean 
nothing  of  the  sort.  She  is  just  a  keen  woman,  X-ray 
ing  intuitively,  cheerfully,  by  a  feminine  process  older 
than  Freud,  and  without  eagerness.  Especially  without 
eagerness.  She  doesn't  want  anything  badly  enough  to 
strain  a  ligament  reaching  for  it. 

Whatever  postponed  feelings  she  might  have  about 
Zorn,  I  knew  that  it  was  Rudley  she  wanted  to  under 
stand.  I  don't  believe  she  succeeded.  But  she  went 
about  the  business  beautifully. 

It  was  hugely  entertaining  to  watch  her  while  Rudley 
swung  through  a  rattling  story  about  Arizona,  dia 
gramming  the  adventure  with  a  salt-cellar,  a  fork,  and  a 
leaf  fallen  from  the  little  centerpiece  vase.  .  .  . 

"Here  was  the  burro — an  ugly  devil  with  a  peevish 
mouth  and  the  eyes  of  an  affectionate  gazelle — and  there 
was  Hutch  with  his  three-fingered  right  hand  holding 
down  the  Sorora  chap.  Then,  suddenly,  from  somewhere 
over  about  as  far  as  you,  Miss  Rowning,  or  say  between 


NEIGHBORS  79 

you  and  Zorn,  came  a  deuce  of  a  screeching  sound,  one 
of  those  .  .  ." 

"Wait  a  moment,"  interposed  Sarah.  "I  thought 
you  said  that  Hutch  was  running  back  for  his  gun.'* 

Rudley  shook  his  head  in  mock  sadness.  "You 
naven't  been  listening — that  was  Mattrey." 

Sarah  had  the  last  word.  "You  might  have  borrowed 
my  fork  and  made  it  clear." 

At  this  Zorn  laughed.  I  hadn't  heard  him  laugh  be 
fore,  and  the  thing  became  fantastically  illuminating. 
It  resulted  in  my  noticing  that  it  was  upon  Sarah  that 
those  queer  eyes  of  his  were  fastened  while  Rudley  went 
to  the  end  of  his  adventure. 

I  have  forgotten  how  it  came  about,  but  Aunt  Paul 
told  one  of  her  best  stories,  an  experience  at  a  tea 
house  somewhere  in  India.  Dramatically  it  was  hurt  a 
bit  at  the  end  by  a  foozle  on  the  part  of  the  Swedish 
person,  who  is  strongly  averse  to  any  excitement,  and 
who  revealed  her  condition  of  mind  by  bumping  the 
cage  of  the  parrot. 

Zorn  evidently  had  his  question  ready.  "When  were 
you  in  India?" 

My  aunt  figured.     "In  ...  nineteen  six." 

"I  was  there  the  year  before,"  said  Zorn.  Then, 
after  a  pause,  "  It  is  a  sad  country." 

As  I  would  have  expected,  my  aunt  didn't  care  to 
know  at  this  juncture  how  sad  any  country  was,  and 
she  sought  to  get  into  safer  longitudes  by  asking  Zorn 
if  he  had  ever  been  in  Brazil.  I'm  puzzled  to  know  why 
she  chose  Brazil.  But  it  didn't  matter.  Zorn  held 
fast  to  India. 

"...  a  sad  country,"  he  repeated.  "It  can't  last. 
It  is  an  anachronism.  You  can't  stifle  a  whole  people 
like  that.  No;  it  can't  be  done.  And  England  knows 
it.  ...  I  beg  your  pardon" — he  turned  to  my  aunt — 
"you  asked  me  if  I  had  been  .  .  .  where?  In  Brazil? 


80  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

No.  I  should  like  to  have  seen  some  of  it.  But  it's 
too  late.  I  shall  never  see  any  more  countries." 

"  Nonsense !"  declared  my  aunt.     "  You  don't  mean — " 

"I  mean,"  said  Zorn,  "that  there  is  trouble  enough 
without  hunting  for  it.  There  is  no  happy  country. 
You  can't  get  away  from  the  cry  of  humanity.  You 
may  run  from  it.  It's  like  running  from  yourself.  It 
meets  you  everywhere." 

"Good  heavens!"  cried  Aunt  Paul.  "What  a  de 
pressing  idea!  Of  course  there  is  whimpering.  But 
didn't  you  hear  the  songs?" 

There  was  something  in  this  rather  poetic  protest 
of  my  aunt  that  checked  Zorn  for  a  moment.  He  flushed 
as  if  about  to  say  something  bitter,  and  evidently 
changed  his  mind. 

"I  know,"  he  said.  "I'm  a  fool.  In  half  an  hour 
or  so  I  must  leave  you  because  of  something  the  war 
has  done.  We  aren't  in  that  ghastly  mess — I  hope 
we  may  not  be — but  it  has  reached  out  to  do  some 
frightful  things  to  people  here  .  .  .  thousands  of 
miles  away  from  it.  I'm  a  fool  to  get  tangled  in 
such  things,  an  utter  fool.  I  know  it.  Rudley,  there, 
is  good  enough  to  remind  me  of  this  fact  at  appropriate 
intervals.  .  .  ." 

"You're  right  I  do!"  said  Rudley,  in  a  gay  tone. 
"And  I've  half  a  mind  to  forbid  you  to  leave  here  on 
any  old  errand  whatever.  This  man,"  and  he  sum 
moned  us  all  to  contemplate  Zorn — "this  man  .  .  ." 

Zorn  made  a  gesture.  "I  could  tell  you  a  story"  .  .  . 
he  was  looking  intently  at  Sarah  .  .  .  "directly  out  of 
life,  the  life  right  here  around  us,  that  will  .  .  .  but  it 
would  be,  as  Miss — eh — Rowning  has  said,  rather  de 
pressing.  This  is  not  the  place  for  it.  No.  It  is  not 
the  place  ...  or  the  time." 

"I  permit  you  to  tell  it  to  Grayl  later  for  his  book," 
said  Rudley,  rather  cruelly,  I  thought. 

"His  book?"     Zorn  caught  this  with  a  disconcerting 


NEIGHBORS  81 

quickness.  He  turned  keenly  to  me.  "Are  you  writing 
a  book?" 

"In  all  humility/'  I  said. 

"I  hope  not,"  was  his  protest  to  this.  "Don't  be 
humble  about  it — I  don't  believe  you  are.  You  don't 
look  humble  at  all.  I  hope  your  looks  don't  belie  you. 
Think  with  humility,  my  friend.  Pray  to  God  with 
humility,  if  you  do  that  sort  of  thing — pray  to  your  own 
soul  with  humility.  But  for  God's  sake  write  with  arro 
gance!  Humble  art  is  a  horror.  Can  you  imagine  a 
truckling  masterpiece?  If  you  can  you  may  imagine  a 
cyclone  that  inquires  the  way,  or  a  sea  tide  that  begs 
your  pardon." 

"Don't  worry  about  Anson,  Mr.  Zorn,"  Sarah  chirped, 
with  her  mischievous  look.  "He'll  be  cocky  enough 
when  he  gets  started." 

"In  the  first  book,  anyway,"  amended  my  aunt. 
"In  the  later  ones,  after  the  drubbings,  he  may  be  de 
fiant,  but  the  arrogance  is  to  be  doubted.  Wait  until 
they  get  at  him  and  tell  all  the  things  his  book  isn't." 

I  suggested  that  these  personalities  were  in  very  bad 
taste. 

"I  believe  you  are  right,"  Zorn  declared,  seriously. 
"And  I  hope  you  won't  take  offense  if  I  say  that  I  hope 
your  book  won't  be  too  impeccable  in  that  matter  of 
taste.  There  is  a  special  hell  for  books  in  perfect  taste." 

"Oh,  say!"  cried  Rudley.  "Aren't  you  a  little  early 
in  consigning  Grayl?  Old  man" — turning  to  me — "he 
deserves  to  have  you  hand  him  some  of  the  rough  stuff 
right  now — a  good  walloping  sample." 

We  got  away  from  this  foolish  topic — dinner  talk  is 
a  journey  that  is  all  sidings — by  the  route  of  Sarah's 
discovery  that  we  had  said  never  a  word  about  the  old 
days  at  the  Academy.  Rudley  did  not  kindle  at  this 
spark,  though  he  made  some  appreciative  allusion. 
Zorn's  presence  hardly  made  that  sort  of  reminiscence 
a  desirable  indulgence.  However,  the  switching  came 


m  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

about  again  in  a  natural  enough  way  by  the  coming  of 
the  coffee  and  a  droll  little  Algerian  tray  with  the  to 
bacco.  (It  was  my  aunt,  rounder  that  she  is,  who  had 
reminded  me  to  acquire  these  supplies.  A  man  who 
doesn't  smoke  is  notoriously  neglectful  of  such  decencies.) 

Rudley  preferred  a  cigarette.  Zorn,  after  an  instant's 
hesitation,  asked  if  any  one  would  feel  insulted  if  he 
lighted  a  cigar  he  had  in  his  pocket,  adding,  with  more 
of  sophistry  than  I  had  yet  heard  him  use,  that  it  would 
only  get  broken  if  he  neglected  it  longer.  And  so  he 
had  the  black,  snub-nosed  thing  he  really  wanted,  and 
was  soon,  to  my  aunt's  immense  amusement,  throwing 
out,  like  a  submarine-baited  liner,  a  smoke  screen  of 
appalling  opacity. 

"I  hope,"  said  the  voice  from  the  cloud,  "that  I  may 
give  no  offense  if  I  say  that  I'm  glad  you  ladies  don't 
smoke." 

"Well,"  remarked  my  aunt,  "I  hope  I  may  give  no 
offense  if  I  say  that  I  have  not  been  actuated  by  the 
hope  of  that  reward." 

"I  see,"  said  Zorn,  with  something  that  for  him 
amounted  to  a  chuckle.  "Of  course  not."  He  paused 
long  enough  to  become  visible  again  and  was  to  be  dis 
cerned  as  beaming  almost  admiringly  upon  my  aunt. 

"You  know,"  he  went  on,  "I  have  heard  them  say, 
'All  the  women  smoke  now,'  and  concrete  variations  are 
interesting  on  that  account  particularly." 

Aunt  Paul's  opinion  was  that  "sets"  smoked  rather 
extensively,  but  that  sets  are  an  insignificant  item  in  the 
population. 

Sarah  cut  in  with,  "I  want  the  privilege,  but  I  don't 
care  for  the  tobacco." 

"In  the  presence  of  both,"  said  Rudley,  "you  ought 
to  feel  that  you  are  doing  as  you  choose." 

"I  am,"  said  Sarah. 

Zorn  went  away  soon  after  we  left  the  table. 

His  apology  to  my  aunt  may  have  been  affected  by 


NEIGHBORS  83 

the  suddenness  of  his  decision  that  the  time  had  come. 
At  all  events,  it  was  an  original  and  precipitate  matter. 
In  view  of  what  happened  after  he  had  gone,  I  wish 
now  that  he  had  stayed  longer.  His  being  there  would 
somehow  have  helped  me  to  get  an  angle.  .  .  . 


VI 

That  picture  of  Sarah  at  the  piano  and  Rudley  look 
ing  down  at  her  was  trite  enough  as  a  picture.  Many  a 
time  I  had  seen  Sarah's  fingers  nickering  over  the  keys 
in  the  midst  of  a  bunch  of  bellowing  youngsters,  or  guid 
ing  by  the  leading-string  of  an  emphasized  melody 
some  vociferous  warbling  chap  in  whom  music  was  so 
much  more  a  wish  than  a  faculty.  I  had  seen  them 
singly  and  in  groups  hang  about  while  she  let  loose  in  a 
strident  thing  that  took  their  fancy,  or  hover  quelled 
and  mystified  while  she  evoked  some  soft  fantasy  in  which 
it  was  plain  that  she  forgot  her  hearers  altogether. 

Nevertheless,  that  particular  picture  of  the  Eternal 
Two  seemed  utterly  novel.  It  made  me  as  dumb  as  an 
embarrassed  stranger.  To  have  that  queer  new  sense 
of  potentiality  in  Sarah,  of  something  in  her  image  that 
quivered  like  an  aura  in  action,  was  to  feel  like  accusing 
her  of  an  indefinable  immodesty.  I  knew  that  the  idea 
was  absurd,  but  her  frock  began  to  seem  indelicate,  the 
bare  of  her  neck  and  shoulders  to  look  brazen,  profli 
gate.  .  .  . 

As  for  Rudley,  his  very  frankness  and  comradery,  his 
way  of  seeming  to  have  dropped  into  this  amazing  re 
lationship  as  lightly  as  one  might  take  a  hand  in  a  game 
of  bridge,  gave  me  a  damn-your-impudence  feeling. 

Of  course  there  was  a  sort  of  background.  Rudley  is 
an  alumnus  of  the  Academy.  There  is  nothing  against 
that  part  of  his  record.  The  old  summer  home  of  the 
Rudleys  is  one  of  the  landmarks  of  our  county.  He  had 
been  mistakenly  abused  by  Sarah,  though  he  had  no 


84  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

right  to  take  advantage  of  that.  He  was  meeting  Sarah 
under  scrutiny  and  by  no  apparent  connivance  of  his 
own. 

All  the  same,  there  I  was  fidgeting  at  last  as  if  I  had 
been  tricked  and  bagged.  Something  had  been  started 
which  suddenly  began  to  look  like  more  than  I  had  bar 
gained  for.  My  liking  him  was  not  in  question.  One 
may  like  a  man — oh,  yes!  one  may  go  a  long  way  in 
liking  a  man  without  wanting  to  hang  his  sister  about 
that  man's  neck. 

There  was  no  excuse  for  accusing  him  of  going  farther 
than  Sarah,  unless  one  figured  that  in  a  quiet  way  he  was 
deliberately  working  a  charm  which  it  would  be  easy  to 
believe  he  has  in  his  equipment.  There  is  an  effect  in 
his  smile  and  there  is  a  note  in  his  laugh  of  which  even 
a  man  can  feel  the  fascination,  the  more  probably  be 
cause  he  has  no  traditional  handsomeness.  Heaven 
knows  a  pretty  man  would  have  a  small  chance  with 
Sarah. 

Quite  likely,  as  I  look  at  it  now,  Sarah  simply  en 
joyed  what  she  was  doing.  That  is  woman's  elemental 
habit,  the  basis  of  her  immemorial  answer.  If  conse 
quences  are  far  enough  away  women  are  not  concerned 
about  them.  Women  make  no  diagrams.  They  can 
ignore  consequences  because  they  deny  sequences. 
They  play  with  fire,  but  if  the  house  burns  down  they 
blame  Providence.  They  like  to  live  by  promissory 
notes  without  a  date. 

Perhaps  this  is  a  means  of  being  delightful.  When  a 
man  does  the  same  thing  we  call  him  hard  names.  We 
ask  him  to  be  logical.  And  when  he  is  logical  he  stops 
being  delightful.  We  call  children  the  real  poets,  then 
proceed  to  hammer  their  dreams  into  a  shapeless  mess 
by  way  of  teaching  them  consequences.  That  Great 
Wish  to  be  happy  must,  I  suppose,  always  carry  its  per 
sistent  When?  Life's  habit  of  translating  great  wishes 
into  deferred  hopes  is  a  trick  women  in  particular  have 


NEIGHBORS  85 

a  way  of  recognizing  with  impatience.  They  are  best 
at  understanding  the  Now.  .  .  . 

Sarah  is  a  Now  person. 

"You  know,"  she  said  to  me  on  a  certain  occasion, 
"you  told  me  once  that  always  it  is  Now — that  the 
future  is  merely  a  region  of  potential  Nows.  Isn't 
it  wonderful  how  I  can  remember  those  high-brow 
things?" 

She  is  capable  of  quoting  me  to  justify  anything. 

Aunt  Paul's  opinion  of  what  she  saw  in  those  two 
figures  at  the  piano  I  made  no  headway  in  sur 
mising.  She  would  never  be  a  restraint  in  the  awk 
ward  sense.  She  is  the  best  sort  of  company,  an  ap- 
preciator  rather  than  a  critic,  though  her  appreciations 
can  cut,  too. 

It  is  true  that  I  have  heard  her  say  that  she  didn't 
like  "snaky"  music,  the  kind  that  smells  too  strongly 
of  brandy  and  cigarettes.  She  knows  enough  about  music 
not  to  be  fooled.  When  the  composer  is  a  crook  she 
knows  it.  This  is  her  way  of  paying  tribute  to  music 
as  a  real  art,  not  only  adequate  for  all  expression,  but 
as  much  responsible  for  what  it  says  as  any  other  art. 
Yet  she  has  always  insisted  that  she  is  capable  of  liking 
music  with  the  devil  in  it — a  healthy  devil. 

I  am  sure  she  has  always  liked  a  little  of  the  healthy 
devil  in  Sarah — at  least  in  her  playing  and  in  her  talk. 

I  am  sure  she  liked  the  way  Sarah  played  for  Rudley 
and  that  she  was  not  disturbed  by  this  extraordinary  il 
lumination  of  Sarah.  Whether  she  liked  seeing  Rudley 
there,  whether  she  was  considering  what  might  come  of 
it  (with  the  next-door  part  of  the  business  in  mind),  I 
couldn't  make  out. 

In  fact,  she  was  a  bit  illuminated  herself. 

It  was  she  who  most  promptly  seconded  Rudley's  sug 
gestion  that  we  all  get  together  in  a  "good  sing."  Rud 
ley  said  he  was  "just  hungry  for  a  howl." 

And  so  it  happened  that  the  quartet  of  us  actually 


«6  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

crept,  stumbled,  and  wiggled  into  a  kind  of  harmony 
that  lacked  nothing  in  volume  once  the  co-ordination 
was  completed. 

"Here  you,  Anson!"  cried  Rudley,  at  the  end  of  that 
first  school  song,  "hit  it  up!  You're  not  doing  your 
share.  A  little  more  punch  in  that  tenor." 

"I  see,"  I  said.     "You  want  simply  loudness." 

Sarah's  buoyant  treble,  like  an  airplane  in  the  blue; 
my  aunt's  contralto  (with  a  ripe  humor  in  it);  and  a 
kind  of  joyously  bullying  barytone  from  Rudley — de 
served  a  better  contribution  than  I  could  accomplish. 
But  we  did,  I  fancy,  make  an  amiable  noise.  We  sang 
"Tipperary,"  and  "Home  Fires,"  and  one  of  the  Hippo 
drome  things,  with  much  more,  old  and  new,  and  were 
in  such  hearty  running  "somewhere  in  G,"  as  Rudley 
put  it,  that  it  was  a  small  miracle  to  have  heard,  as  I 
did,  the  twitter  of  the  telephone. 

I  slipped  away,  leaving  the  trio  to  carry  the  respon 
sibilities  of  the  song,  and  gave  ear  to  the  voice  of  Alonzo, 
the  night  elevator  boy. 

"Miss  Sherrick  calling." 

The  pause  before  I  said,  "Have  her  come  up,"  might 
easily  have  been  longer.  I'm  not  accustomed  to  the  gear 
clutches  of  city  machinery,  and  I  felt  an  involuntary 
repugnance  to  any  complication  of  the  present  situation. 
But  of  course  there  was  no  way  out. 

I  was  obliged  to  interrupt  the  song. 

"You  have  a  visitor,"  I  said  to  Sarah. 

"Who?"     She  swung  about  on  the  piano  bench. 

"Miss  Sherrick." 

I  rather  doubt  that  Rudley  heard  the  name.  My  im 
pression  is  that  he  turned  to  say  something  to  my  aunt 
at  the  moment  it  was  pronounced.  This  would  have 
no  importance  save  that  I  was  sent  back  to  that  moment 
when  I  undertook  to  analyze  my  recollection  of  his 
expression  when  he  saw  the  visitor. 

We  were  all  standing  in  an  interrupted  way  when 


NEIGHBORS  87 

Sarah,  her  cordialities  heightened  by  excitement,  bustled 
in  with  her  caller. 

"Aunt  Paul,  this  is  my  Laura  Sherrick  .  .  ."  We  were 
each  identified,  and  each  received  a  hand  that  came 
with  an  easy  energy  of  action,  and  met  a  pair  of  cool, 
deep-blue  eyes,  brilliant  in  the  spirit  of  tourmalin,  with 
rich  lashes  and  a  kind  of  searching  friendliness  that 
amounted  almost  to  a  challenge. 

As  it  happened,  Rudley  came  last  by  the  accident  of 
his  position  in  the  group.  He  saw  before  he  was  seen, 
and  his  suddenly  fixed  expression  might  have  passed  for 
a  particularly  ardent  degree  of  admiration,  astonishment, 
or  curiosity,  but  for  the  sign  I  saw  in  her  as  they  shook 
hands,  each  mentioning  the  other's  name  with  what 
seemed  to  me  a  significant  clearness. 

I  may  be  wrong;  I  should  hate  to  give  Sarah  the  ex 
cuse  for  calling  me  suspicious,  and  hate  much  more  to 
be  suspicious;  but  if  Rudley  and  Laura  Sherrick  had  not 
met  before,  if  they  have  not  known  each  other,  I  must 
have  been  affected  by  some  foolish  imaginative  strain 
under  which  I  went  through  mental  motions  that  would 
afterward  make  me  a  very  bad  witness.  If  they  have 
known  each  other,  their  concealment  of  the  fact  is  not 
reassuring  as  to  either. 

An  unheralded  call  at  this  hour  was  evidently  without 
oddity  to  Laura  Sherrick.  Certainly  she  laid  no  stress 
on  that  point.  It  had  come  into  her  head  to  see  Sarah, 
to  locate  her;  also,  as  it  turned  out,  to  ask  her  to  go 
with  her  to-morrow  night  to  some  gathering  where  they 
were  to  have  a  great  Russian  author. 

She  said  author,  but  I  wondered  if  she  meant  some 
feverish  revolutionist — which  may  have  been  part  of  the 
suspicious  twist  that  had  been  given  to  my  impressions. 

When  Sarah  said,  "We've  been  having  a  song  fest," 
Miss  Sherrick  remarked :  "  How  jolly !  I  hope  you  won't 
stop." 

She  is  a  marvelously  poised  person,  this  Laura  Sherrick, 


88  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

with  an  effect  of  enameled  wisdom.  She  wore  the  small 
est  hat  I  have  ever  seen  on  a  girl — a  mere  skull-cap  affair 
from  beneath  which  her  gleaming  brown  hair,  longer  than 
I  had  remembered  in  the  picture,  but  still  bobbed  in  a 
juvenile  way,  floated  out  to  the  framing  of  her  face.  I 
saw  through  the  parting  of  her  heavily  furred  coat  that 
she  wore  a  bright-green  blouse  sort  of  garment.  The 
emerald  note  was  repeated  at  the  ankles.  Once,  in  the 
ante-metropolis  days,  I  should  have  thought  this  the 
atrical.  Yet  the  most  striking  thing  about  the  girl  was 
her  quiet;  a  flaming  quiet,  if  that  is  thinkable,  yet  a 
quiet;  a  control  that  was  almost  demure.  I  wondered 
if  she  was  what  would  be  called  magnetic.  I  suppose  I 
have  always  thought  of  magnetic  women  as  having  a 
smoldering  effect.  Yet  a  magnet  is  a  cool  and  shiny 
thing — like  Laura  Sherrick. 

The  gesture  by  which  she  plucked  off  the  cap  and 
dropped  it  on  a  near-by  cabinet  struck  me  as  entirely 
unconscious.  This  was  at  the  approach  of  my  aunt 
to  urge  the  removal  of  her  wrap. 

And  so  we  became  five  again  and  sought  to  recast  our 
evening. 

Sarah  was  so  eager  to  have  us  apprehend  the  wonder 
of  Miss  Sherrick  that  she  was  less  effective  than  usual 
in  help  to  that  end.  Her  admiring  eyes  told  plainly  of 
a  wish  to  lead  us  all  to  the  feet  of  the  idol  thus  suddenly 
dropped  into  the  midst.  As  so  often  happens  under 
such  circumstances,  the  idol  didn't  seem  to  perform  very 
well.  She  is  good  to  look  at,  and  I  suppose  she  is  clever. 
But  something  prevented  her  from  sparkling.  For  the 
matter  of  that,  we  all  were  rather  poor  performers  in 
those  first  moments. 

Rudley  hung  silently  in  the  background  during  Miss 
Sherrick's  colloquy  with  my  aunt  and  while  Sarah  drew 
me  into  talk  about  New  York — by  the  neck,  as  you  might 
say,  through  the  use  of  a  violent  quotation. 

"Don't  you  like  New  York?"  asked  Miss  Sherrick. 


NEIGHBORS  89 

"If  you  mean  the  place,"  I  said,  "I  think  it  is  an 
Arabian  Nights  dream,  with  a  little  of  the  nightmare 
touch.  If  you  mean  the  people,  I  don't  know  them  yet. 
It's  a  big  job  getting  acquainted." 

"Well,"  drawled  my  aunt,  "if  you  hold  off  until 
you've  met  them  all — " 

"I  know  what  you  mean,"  declared  Miss  Sherrick, 
looking  in  my  direction.  "You're  fair  enough.  If  you 
were  a  foreign  visitor  you'd  have  to  pass  an  opinion 
before  you  had  passed  Liberty  down  the  Bay." 

"And  have  said,"  added  my  aunt,  "with  utter  origi 
nality,  that  it  suggested  the  Alhambra." 

It  wasn't  fair,  in  Miss  Sherrick's  view,  to  tote  people 
into  New  York  by  the  southern  waterway.  New  York 
couldn't  live  up  to  the  promise  of  that  angle. 

I  suggested  that  the  procedure  might  be  a  matter  of 
temperamental  obligations.  A  pessimist  should  come 
into  a  city  by  the  back  door.  In  that  way  he  starts  with 
the  joy  of  being  confirmed  in  his  low  expectations.  You 
may  be  able  to  do  something  with  him  later.  Whereas, 
if  you  humiliate  him  at  first  he'll  get  even  by  finding 
increasingly  confirmatory  disenchantment  in  everything 
he  meets  thereafter.  On  the  other  hand,  you  may  safely 
bring  your  optimist  in  at  the  front  door.  An  optimist 
carries  his  front  doors  about  with  him. 

Miss  Sherrick's  smile  was  as  if  this  made  her  think 
of  something  she  didn't  say.  Then  she  suddenly  threw 
off  some  of  that  ivory  quiet.  She  flung  out  her  hands 
with  an  encompassing  gesture. 

"New  York  is  the  biggest  hypocrite  of  them  all!" 

"How  did  you  come  in?"  inquired  my  aunt. 

We  all  laughed  at  this. 

"Maybe  I  hope  to  go  out  by  the  front  door,"  said  Miss 
Sherrick,  "and  look  back — once." 

"That's  all  Mrs.  Lot  did,"  murmured  my  aunt, 
and  Sarah  exclaimed,  in  the  same  breath,  "Then  you 
can't  be  a  real  pessimist." 


90  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"  No,"  said  Miss  Sherrick,  quietly.  "  I  don't  think  I'm 
a  pessimist.  And  I  don't  think  I'm  that  worst  object 
of  all,  a  disappointed  optimist — that  sort  is  hopeless.  I 
guess  I'm  only  an  orderly  rebel." 

"But  where  shall  you  go,"  asked  Rudley,  with  an 
intent  look,  "when  you  leave  by  the  front  door?'* 

The  bobbed  hair  fluttered  as  Miss  Sheriick  faced  about 
to  glance  at  Rudley. 

"Where?  Anywhere — maybe  back  into  some  strait- 
jacket  of  a  village." 

"Or  you  might  get  into  some  ship,"  suggested  my 
aunt,  in  that  way  she  has  of  rounding  you  up,  "  and  be 
come  the  Girl  Without  a  Country." 

Miss  Sherrick  turned  to  my  aunt  with  a  queer  little 
laugh.  "How  picturesque!  I  suppose  I  deserve  the 
punishment — not  the  punishment  of  the  exile,  but  the 
punishment  of  having  you  suggest  that." 

Aunt  Paul  protested  gently. 

"Oh,  I  know  the  tiresomeness  of  complaints  about 
the  dreadful  city.  Of  course  New  York  isn't  dreadful 
at  all.  It's  mostly  stupid — just  a  dear  old  fool." 

I  urged  that  she  give  herself  a  little  more  time.  A 
great  American  philosopher  wrote  a  poem,  "Good-by, 
Proud  World,  I'm  Going  Home,"  when  he  was  twenty- 
three  or  thereabouts.  At  seventy  he  thought  we  were  all 
a  pretty  good  sort. 

Her  only  reply  to  this  was: 

"Isn't  it  absurd  the  zigzag  talk  takes?  But  being 
Americans,  we  can't  talk  politics.  Being  New-Yorkers, 
we  know  nothing  about  the  United  States.  Being 
Christians,  we  can't  talk  religion.  Being  respectable,  we 
can't  talk  about  sex.  Being  New-Thoughters,  we  can't 
talk  about  our  aches  and  pains.  Being  rather  comfort 
able,  there's  no  fun  talking  about  poverty.  And  being 
bored  and  cautious,  most  of  us  can't  talk  about  the  war. 
Really,  there  isn't  much  left,  is  there?" 

"Excepting  something  to  eat,"  said  my  aunt,  in  her 


NEIGHBORS  91 

cheery,  brushing-aside-the-debris  manner.  "We're  going 
to  have  a  snack." 

The  snack  included  a  choice  of  grape-juice,  port,  and 
beer,  with  cheese  and  wafers.  Sarah,  as  usual,  was 
hungry.  I  noticed  that  neither  Miss  Sherrick  nor  Rud- 
ley  accomplished  more  than  a  pretense  of  nibbling. 

The  huge  advantage  of  food  in  a  disconcerted  evening 
is  that  it  makes  pauses  plausible.  It  is  hurrying  to  fill 
the  gaps  that  spoils  so  much  conversation.  A  terrifying 
hiatus  is  never  germinative  like  something  to  munch. 
So  that  our  fortunes  looked  up  appreciably  by  means  of 
this  lubricant.  Rudley  came  out  of  his  quiet  with  an 
infectious  story  about  the  Italians  and  their  onions  in 
the  new  Subway  cavern.  Even  Laura  Sherrick  had  for 
this  a  quick,  unreserved  laugh  that  made  her  seem  less 
metallic  and  mysterious.  She  went  farther.  She  asked 
if  she  might  smoke  a  cigarette.  I  took  this  to  mean  that 
we  were  collectively  elected. 

My  aunt  gave  a  keen  glance  to  the  technic  of  the 
cigarette  incident.  As  a  spectacle  this  was  truly  the 
sort  of  thing  you  would  like  if  you  liked  that  sort  of 
thing.  I  remember  that  it  was  just  after  she  had 
liberated  a  serpentine  trickle  of  smoke  from  between 
those  disquieting  lips  that  Miss  Sherrick  remarked  to 
me,  abruptly: 

"I  suspect  you  of  liking  to  read  people.  But  don't 
try  to  guess  me  to-night.  You  would  get  it  wrong." 

I  reminded  her  that  I  had  put  myself  on  record  as 
for  slowly  formed  judgments. 

"But  that  was  for  me,"  she  retorted.  "A  man's  ad 
vice  to  a  woman  doesn't  even  remotely  indicate  his  own 
practices.  You  know  that." 

"Cynic!"  I  said. 

"Quibbler!"  she  murmured  through  a  particularly 
delicate  spiral  of  smoke. 

When  she  stood  up  to  go  Rudley  slipped  away  to  his 
own  quarters  for  his  hat  and  coat.  His  move  occasioned 


92  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Sarah's  remark  that  he  lived  in  the  next  apartment — 
a  piece  of  information  which,  for  some  reason,  Miss 
Sherrick  received  with  a  look  of  special  interest. 

"I  don't  want  any  one  to  go  home  with  me."  She 
turned  to  Rudley  as  he  came  back.  "You're  very  kind, 
but—" 

"You  will  permit  me — "  Rudley  began. 

But  she  shook  her  head  with  a  quiet  finality  no  one 
could  misinterpret. 

"It's  a  bad  theory,  this  seeing  able-bodied  women 
home.  Let  me  have  my  prejudices." 

I  thought  Rudley  winced.  At  all  events,  he  was  de 
feated.  He  appeared  subdued  when  he  himself  left  us 
a  little  later,  though  he  made  a  jovial  parting  speech. 

I  wish  I  knew  whether  Miss  Sherrick  and  Rudley  had 
met  before. 

VII 

It  was  natural  that  when  I  again  caught  a  glimpse, 
this  morning,  of  the  girl  at  the  window  she  should  have 
a  different  meaning.  No,  not  different.  Let  us  say 
more  meaning.  Somehow  bringing  her  into  comparison 
or  association  with  Sarah  and  Laura  Sherrick  gave  her 
a  new  vividness.  She  gleamed  in  that  wall  of  houses 
like  essonite  set  in  bronze,  or  a  bit  of  lonesome  larkspur 
in  the  gray  corner  of  a  garden. 

She  wore  a  pale  gown,  a  loose,  flowing  thing,  in  which 
a  design  that  may  be  embroidery  made  me  think  of  the 
silhouettes  printed  by  sunlight  through  a  fringe  of  leaves. 
Her  hair  was  braided  (that  expedient  forbidden  by  St. 
Paul).  There  were  two  braids,  in  fact.  One  of  these 
she  held  in  her  fingers.  Perhaps  she  was  tying  some  bit 
of  ribbon  at  the  end. 

I  wonder  what  she  reads.  I  wonder  what  she  thinks 
when  she  stares  into  the  street.  ...  I  wonder  what  she 
does  in  those  hours  of  her  invisibility.  On  Sunday  morn 
ings  she  goes  to  church  with  the  hovering  lady.  Is  she 


NEIGHBORS  93 

besieged  by  would-be  lovers?  Does  she  ever  go  to  lob 
ster  palaces?  Does  she  dance,  or  quiver  in  the  frenzies 
of  bridge?  Is  it  possible  to  think  of  her  as  smoking, 
for  example,  at  the  Ritz,  at  the  Copper  Kettle,  or  in  a 
secret  sacristy  behind  that  window-pane? 

Here  is  the  grotesque  miracle :  She  may  look  like  this, 
yet  be  anything  and  do  anything  you  like  to  fancy.  A 
bewildering  triumph  for  liberalism.  No  twist  of  the 
Japanese  girdle  to  say,  "I  am  still  a  maiden."  No  trick 
of  coiffure  or  robe  to  say,  "I  have  passed  this  age,  or  I 
am  of  this  caste  or  that."  We  have  chucked  the  insignia, 
rubbed  away  the  shackling  names,  and  invested  her  with 
the  glittering  mysteries  of  the  Ineffable  Girl. 

There  is  a  kind  of  symbolism  in  such  a  glimpse — 
Woman  framed  by  the  City.  (There  is  a  "lead"  in  this 
for  the  Book.)  .  .  . 

I  can  recall  several  charming  stories  of  window  love- 
affairs.  There  was  one  of  a  code  of  signals,  built  up 
the  way  prisoners  build  alphabets  out  of  nothing  in 
signaling  through  a  thick  wall.  Then  there  was  one  of 
a  string  run  across  that  carried  precious,  pulsating  let 
ters.  And  that  story  of  the  pigeon.  .  .  . 

These  would  be  on  a  different  sort  of  street.  And  not 
with  a  girl  like  Felicia. 

What  would  happen  if  a  man  could  handle  life  the 
way  he  handles  a  written  thing?  Suppose  I  were  to 
stalk  across  the  street,  push  that  button  beside  the  door, 
and  say  to  the  maid  (she  would  be  startled,  of  course) : 
"Don't  announce  me.  I  have  a  little  surprise  for  Miss 
Felicia."  Suppose  I  dashed  up-stairs,  knowing  just 
where  she  was,  and  popped  into  that  front  room,  breezily, 
as  you  might  say,  but  without  any  effect  likely  to  offend 
her  as  vulgarly  melodramatic.  And  suppose  I  were  to 
say  to  her  this: 

"Felicia,  I  have  seen  you  many  times,  always  with 
immense  interest.  Something  subconscious  that  isn't 
reasoning  at  all  (you  know  how  dangerous  reasoning  is) 


94  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

has  steadily  deepened  that  interest.  At  this  moment 
I  am  profoundly  in  love  with  you.  You  may  judge  of 
the  degree  of  this  passion  by  the  extraordinary  violence 
of  this  method.  If  you  knew  me  better  you  would  be 
still  more  likely  to  know  how  violent  the  method  is.  I 
am  not  in  the  least  that  sort  of  a  person — commonly. 
I  am  equally  certain  that  under  ordinary  circumstances 
you  would  be  quite  as  averse  by  habit  and  preference 
to  anything  that  might  be  construed  as  flippant  or  fan 
tastic.  But  listen  for  a  moment  to  your  subconscious- 
ness.  Marriage  is  a  lottery  mostly  because  people  fuss 
too  much  about  the  choice.  Divine  chance  is  frustrated 
by  a  solemn  and  amazingly  futile  artifice  of  selection. 
While  a  clumsy  world  is  chattering  about  courtships  or 
mumbling  about  eugenics,  let  us  suddenly,  with  a  noble 
confidence,  yield  ourselves  to  the  dictates  of  a  sublime 
intuition  that  is  wholly  unsullied  by  purpose.  It  is  true 
that  I  have  a  broken  back.  But,  after  all,  that  is  not  so 
bad  as  a  broken  heart.  Oh  no,  Felicia!  Not  nearly  so 
bad.  The  really  terrible  thing  would  be  that  any  one 
should  have  both.  I'm  sure  you  wouldn't  wish  to  bring 
that  about,  would  you?  Of  course  not.  The  great 
point  is,  that  without  my  knowing  anything  about  you 
except  that  you  knit  and  that  you  are  absurdly  beauti 
ful,  and  without  your  knowing  anything  about  me  except 
that  I  have  a  broken  back  and  a  superhuman  courage, 
we  should  be  accentuating  the  high  spiritual  complete 
ness  of  our  submission  to  the  divine  order.  .  .  ." 

A  man  just  did  go  to  that  door  ...  an  elderly  man, 
with  a  heavily  furred  coat.  He  wears  gray  spats  and 
steps  briskly. 

This  is  a  very  matter-of-fact  street. 


PART    THREE 

The  Hidden  River 


A  MAN  might  be  halted  in  writing  of  certain  things 
happening  to  himself  if  he  did  not  feel  in  these 
things  the  touch  of  drama.  Thus  I  might  pass  over 
my  meeting  with  Major  Whelan  this  afternoon  if  an  inci 
dent  of  that  visit  had  not  already  begun  a  strange  colora 
tion.  That  incident — a  very  simple  incident — begins 
to  color  the  figures  in  this  narrative.  It  begins  to  color 
the  city  ...  in  a  way,  to  color  life,  to  symbolize  certain 
phases  of  the  eternal  Wish. 

If  this  is  true,  then  the  incident,  though  it  may  belong 
only  to  the  drama  of  myself,  should  be  noted  here. 

It  must  be,  of  course,  that  there  is  for  each  of  us  a 
drama  of  himself — in  any  case,  the  drama  of  his  desire, 
a  drama  big  or  little  by  its  feel  to  him. 

As  for  the  drama  that  is  apparently  outside  of  our 
selves,  how  are  we  honestly  to  measure  it? — how  tell 
what  is  worth  the  telling,  what  must  be  told  to  make 
the  page  honest? 

Perhaps  it  is  with  the  dramatic  as  it  is  with  the  pict 
uresque.  A  picturesque  thing  is  a  thing  that  suggests 
pictures.  But  shall  this  mean  pictures  that  have  been 
made  or  pictures  that  are  to  be  made?  Most  of  us,  I'm 
afraid,  are  looking  back — making  definitions  out  of 
debris.  When  they  began  building  New  York's  sky 
scrapers  there  was  an  almost  unanimous  chorus  of 
horror  from  the  artists.  Then,  after  a  long  time,  it 
seems  that  some  one  called  them  "towers."  Where- 


96  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

upon  there  began  to  appear  an  amazing  transformation 
of  sentiment.  Pennell  was  etching  the  naked  steel 
bones  of  uncompleted  structures  once  called  "mon 
strosities,"  and  adulation  (in  the  phrase  of  my  aunt) 
whispered,  "Alhambra!"  By  all  accounts  Art  wept 
when  the  elevated  roads  were  built,  because  pictures 
never  had  been  made  of  elevated  roads.  If  now  these 
were  taken  away  it  may  be  that  Art  would  weep  again 
for  the  loss  of  the  last  surviving  magic  of  urban  pictu- 
resqueness. 

And  so  I  suppose  that  properly  it  is  the  kind  of  thing 
that  has  been  made  into  drama  that  is  dramatic.  In  that 
case  the  word  would  not  be  a  flame  for  a  headlight,  but 
a  flicker  for  the  tail  of  the  train.  Nevertheless,  because 
I  am  writing  of  things  I  have  felt  as  well  as  of  things 
I  have  seen,  because  I  am  handcuffed  to  no  theory  either 
of  books  or  of  words,  because  I  am  more  interested  in 
men  than  in  either  (and  can  afford  the  splendid  com 
placence  of  saying  so),  I  turn  for  a  moment  to  my  little 
incident. 

When  I  drew  into  the  major's  street  I  caught  sight  of 
the  major  himself  standing  in  a  rapt  attitude  before  a 
ragged  hole  representing  the  sockets  from  which  had 
been  extracted  two  houses  like  the  major's  own  a  little 
farther  down  the  street. 

I  was  halted  on  my  way  to  the  brink  of  the  excavation 
by  noticing  something  in  the  scene  that  differed  from 
the  ordinary  effect  of  such  city  surgery.  There  was  a 
monolith  of  bricks  to  be  shaped  into  a  new  city  hive. 
There  were  barrels  of  lime,  pyramids  of  sand,  and  a 
green  tool-house  lettered  with  the  contractor's  name. 
But  there  were  also  an  engine  and  the  gulping  of  a  pump. 
A  stream  of  yellow  water  followed  the  gutter  until  it 
found  a  sewer  gap  at  the  corner. 

A  group  of  boys  scuffled  over  a  fleet  of  impromptu 
boats  (one  of  them  with  a  mast  and  a  flag)  that  swirled 
convulsively  in  the  muddy  torrent.  The  game  came  to 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  97 

a  crisis  before  the  supreme  peril  of  that  maw  at  the 
corner,  but  there  were  many  intervening  hazards,  for 
obstructive  bricks  and  islands  of  mud  had  been  intro 
duced  by  way  of  slowing  and  diverting  the  stream. 
There  was  no  way  of  being  sure  that  a  ship  would  not 
run  aground  or  lose  headway  in  an  eddy,  so  that  if  you 
had,  in  championship  of  your  very  own  craft,  bet  a  cent, 
or  an  agate,  or  even  a  jack-knife  with  a  blade  only  slight 
ly  damaged,  you  had  to  face  great  odds.  Something  of 
this  was  to  be  gathered  from  the  shrill  excitement  of  the 
group.  .  .  . 

(I  have  sailed  ships  in  the  Mauraug,  which  is  not  like 
a  gutter.  Evidently  it  makes  no  difference  where  you 
find  your  ripples  of  romance.  The  gutter  seems  to  do 
just  as  well.  .  .  .  Perhaps  it  leaves  still  more  to  the 
imagination.  Another  step  and  we  should  have  pure 
poetry  ...  as  where  we  sail  our  ships  on  the  kitchen 
table.) 

The  major's  greeting  impressed  me  as  something  that 
had  called  him  out  of  a  deep  preoccupation. 

He  jerked  his  thumb  toward  the  disordered  hollow. 

"A  bit  of  calamity,"  he  said.  "And  nobody's  fault 
but  the  man  who  invented  tall  buildings.  While  they 
were  content  with  an  every-day  basement  and  cellar 
nothing  happened — sand  here  and  solid  rock  up-town. 
Then  they  want  tall  buildings  and  must  go  deeper. 
Right  enough  principle.  The  plant  that  rears  itself  high 
reaches  far  down  or  far  out  for  support.  But  the  tall 
building  can't  have  wide  roots.  It  can  only  go  down. 
The  earth  rebels  sometimes  at  these  intrusions — plays 
all  sorts  of  tricks.  Here's  a  case."  He  pointed  into 
the  cavern.  "A  hidden  river." 

"A  what?"  was  my  incredulous  exclamation. 

"A  smart  little  stream,  too,"  said  the  major.  "They 
tackled  it  first  with  a  small  pump.  Now  here  is  a  big 
one  also,  working  night  and  day,  clanking  as  I  go  to 
sleep,  still  clanking  when  I  wake  up  in  the  morning." 


98  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

I  peered  over  the  edge  of  the  barrier,  and  saw  the 
yellow  pool  and  the  leaping  stream,  as  from  a  severed 
artery,  that  fed  it  from  midway  of  the  space. 

"The  pumps/*  said  the  major,  "have  been  going  for 
four  months,  while  twentieth-century  ingenuity — that 
boasted  mastery  of  physical  forces — has  been  puttering 
over  ways  and  means  to  conquer  that  little  hidden 
river  that  has  had  its  secret  bared  at  last.  Of  course  it 
had  been  proceeding  quietly  about  its  business,  *  running 
somewhere  safe  to  sea,'  since  the  Dutch  came  to  Man 
hattan,  bringing  Santa  Glaus  and  public  schools  with 
them,  and  cheating  New  England  out  of  that  much 
glory.  And  what  a  lot  of  trouble  that  trout-brook  sort 
of  thing  has  made !  Do  you  see  the  houses  shored  up  on 
each  side  and  new  foundation  walls  wedged  in?  Do 
you  see  these  shafts,  and  cement-pits,  and  this  jumble 
of  stuff  I  don't  understand  at  all — so  that  they  can  get 
at  the  real  game  before  freezing  weather?"  The  major 
chuckled.  "  Cocksureness !"  He  waved  his  hand  tow 
ard  a  sign  high  on  the  raw  wall  of  the  eastern  house. 

The  sign  said,  "These  apartments  will  be  ready  for 
occupancy  November  First." 

"And  they're  not  to  the  street  level,"  grunted  the 
major,  "with  November  slipping  away!" 

Something  elicited  my  second  glance  at  the  sign. 
It  was  the  last  row  of  letters — "The  Rudley  Corpora 
tion."  One  of  the  spawnings  of  that  prolific  commer 
cial  monster  parented  by  Rudley's  father.  .  .  . 

Even  the  suggestiveness  of  this  discovery,  and  the 
major's  more  than  usually  pungent  talk  on  other  mat 
ters  to  which  we  soon  drifted,  did  not  obliterate  a  sense 
of  allegory  in  the  hidden  river  .  .  .  running  like  an  un 
recognized,  unnamed,  yet  fundamental  and  persistent 
current  beneath  the  shell  of  a  city's  life. 

When  we  go  deep  through  the  pretenses  and  make 
shifts  and  incrusted  hypocrisies  of  humanity  we  are 
likely  to  strike  one  of  these  elemental  currents.  And 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  99 

then  there  is  a  scurrying  mess!  It  won't  be  strangled. 
Try  to  do  this,  and  you  undermine  foundations.  Lead 
it  into  the  light,  and  how  it  bubbles  in  brazen  joy  of  its 
published  liberty! 

Take  your  eugenics  or  birth  control  or  other  secret 
currents  of  human  thought — uncover  them,  perhaps  by 
some  accident  of  controversy,  or  some  deliberate  delving 
by  a  restless  revolutionary,  and  how  the  liberated  stream 
sprawls  and  reaches,  unchecked  by  the  arrest  and  con 
viction  of  the  revolutionary,  and  furnishing  at  last  a 
living  surface  on  which  jesters  float  their  wit  as  the 
boys  their  boats  in  the  gutter!  .  .  . 

Or  take  the  stream  of  hot  greed,  flowing  under  the 
crust  of  a  befuddled  Europe.  When  the  crust  is  broken 
by  a  bullet,  a  nasty  bit  of  lead  in  the  one  possible  right 
place — good  God!  what  a  horror!  How  the  flood  has 
spurted,  flaming  like  so  much  molten  hell,  shriveling  and 
defiling,  running  amuck  into  the  fair  valleys,  piling  up 
heaps  of  human  flesh  over  which,  in  the  night,  quiver 
ing  phosphorescent  specters  make  the  living  shudder! 

And  we  here,  with  an  ocean  between,  are  presently 
to  have  another  merry  Christmas!  .  .  . 


II 

The  major  spoke  of  the  war.  One  doesn't  go  far  with 
out  speaking  of  it  nowadays.  And  one  doesn't  go  far 
with  the  major  without  finding  that  he  has  no  affection 
for  England.  He  has  that  vivid  Irish  way  of  speaking 
of  England  as  if  it  were  a  person.  He  says  Her,  but  it 
is  plain  enough  that  his  image  is  of  Him,  a  hulking, 
domineering,  sin-stained  Him,  historically  selfish,  in 
curably  obstinate,  pontifically  insulting. 

I  had  no  wish  to  argue  with  the  major.  Or  if  I  had  a 
wish,  I  had  a  wholesome  fear  of  unpleasant  consequences. 
He  is  a  vehement  man.  He  makes  me  feel  very  young, 
not  only  by  his  years,  but  by  his  extraordinary  quick- 


100  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

on-the-trigger  knowledge  of  past  and  present,  his  electric 
readiness  with  the  argumentative  shillalah. 

It  was  when  we  had  reached  his  house  that  he  became 
most  violent  on  the  subject  of  the  war  and  "England's 
trickery."  England,  as  usual,  was  selfish  clean  through, 
saving  her  own  hide,  working  her  own  game.  Defend 
ing  Belgium,  saving  France?  Faugh!  Nothing  to  that, 
my  lad.  Don't  be  hoodwinked  by  the  old  claptrap.  It 
is  for  England's  benefit  that  England's  fighting,  make 
sure  of  that.  Can  you  believe  anything  else?  Look 
at  the  Boer  War  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  Prating,  as  usual, 
about  noble  humanitarian  aims.  Rot!  The  rottenest 
kind  of  rot.  England  has  only  one  aim — to  be  cock  of 
the  roost,  to  rule  the  waves,  and  the  solid  land,  too, 
when  she  can  grab  it. 

"You're  only  a  kid,"  cried  the  major.  "But  you 
must  have  read  a  little.  You  couldn't  be  the  son  of 
your  father  and  not  have  done  a  bit  of  thinking.  Have 
you  thought  about  England — sniveling  her  appeals  for 
help  from  us! — wanting  us  to  help  her  pull  her  chest 
nuts  out  of  the  fire!  What  do  you  really  think  now? 
Have  they  bedeviled  you?" 

I  was  in  a  corner. 

My  knowledge  of  the  case  was  not  so  profound  as  his, 
I  told  the  major.  Really,  I  didn't  understand  Ireland 
at  all. 

"Who  said  Ireland?"  demanded  the  major. 

"Well,"  I  answered,  with  hesitation,  "if  there  wasn't 
your  Ireland  I  suppose  there  wouldn't  be  your  England, 
either." 

"I  don't  get  you,"  said  the  major. 

"It  is  what  England  has  done  to  Ireland  that  bothers 
you,  isn't  it,  Major?"  I  hurried  on  to  say  that  to  me  it 
seemed  unjust  to  think  of  England  as  one  might  a  per 
son  who  in  his  earlier  days  had  been  guilty  of  unpar 
donable  crimes.  He  would  correct  me  if  I  was  wrong — 
but  how  cruel  had  Englishmen  now  living  been  to  Ire- 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  101 

land?  Had  not  modern  England'  made  'some  effort  to" 
be  just,  or  at  least  humanly  fair,  to  Ireland?  Was  Ire 
land  itself  agreed  as  to  what  it  wanted  from  to-day's 
England  in  atonement  for  what  yesterday's  England 
had  done? 

Then  the  hidden  river  of  the  major's  resentment  was 
loosed.  I  made  out  that  I  was  a  pitiful  example  of 
what  England  had  done  to  the  thinking  of  honest  men 
(he  didn't  say  "honest  fools,"  but  his  phrase  had  that 
flavor).  The  major  plunged  into  the  black  record  of 
England's  crimes.  He  raised  his  thick,  hairy  hands  as 
if  to  show  them  dripping  with  bloody  testimony.  He 
went  back  to  Dermot  of  MacMurrough,  to  the  Earl  of 
Desmond,  to  Emmet  and  O'Connell,  to  the  Boyne  and 
Drogheda  and  Dolly's  Brae  and  the  Great  Rebellion. 
I  saw  the  iron  claw  of  England  crashing  through  the 
white  brow  of  Irish  liberty.  I  was  invited  to  scan  the 
ghastly  trailing  devastation  of  England's  greedy  des 
potism.  The  picture  was  unfolded  with  a  passionate 
swiftness  as  of  something  unfolded  a  thousand  times  be 
fore.  The  words  leaped  like  'flames,  and  they  burned 
deep  into  my  sense  of  a  situation  that  was,  of  course, 
sadly  vague  to  me. 

"And  you  say  'men  now  living'!"  cried  the  major,  in 
an  amazing  crisis  of  denunciation.  "Why,  in  the  year 
I  was  born  they  were  hanging  and  transporting !  Do  you 
think  Ireland  has  suffered  nothing  in  my  time?  Didn't 
I  watch  them  pack  the  prisons  when  I  was  a  boy?  If 
you  think  the  fangs  of  the  beast  have  been  drawn  or 
that  he  has  somehow  gone  through  a  miraculous  spirit- 
ualization,  look  at  Casement.  There's  a  spectacle  of 
cruel  stupidity  to  wring  a  groan  from  the  gods." 

"But,  Major,"  I  said,  "wasn't  this  for  a  stab  in  the 
back  while  an  honest  fight  was  going  on?" 

"An  honest  fight?  No!  Never!  England  never  was 
in  an  honest  fight.  Honest  fighting  isn't  her  game  at 

all.     She  isn't  honest  in  this  war.     Just  another  dam- 

8 


102  THE  -GREAT  DESIRE 

liable,  *  self -seeking,  'blundering  English  trick — and  try 
ing  to  drag  Ireland  in  by  the  heels,  and  to  seduce  America 
besides.  Holy  saints !  What  a  mockery !  If  there  were 
nincompoops  enough  over  here  I  suppose  we  should  have 
been  handed  over  to  England's  help — by  the  scruff  of 
the  neck  if  necessary." 

"  Then  you  would  be  for  letting  Belgium  and  France — " 

"I  wouldn't  help  England  if  there  were  twenty  Bel- 
giums!"  shouted  the  major. 

I  stood  up,  and  found  myself  twisting  my  hat  rather 
violently. 

A  strange  picture  began  forming  itself  in  my  mind. 
I  forgot  about  Ireland  altogether. 

"Major,"  I  said,  standing  before  him,  "here's  the  way 
it  would  look  to  me — " 

"Go  on.  You  have  a  right."  He  gesticulated  with 
his  pipe. 

"To  me  it  seems  like  this:  Let  us  suppose  that  on 
the  next  block  a  big  brute  with  brass  knuckles  on  one 
hand  and  with  a  sheath-knife  in  the  other  began  an 
attack  on  his  neighbors.  A  cry  of  alarm  runs  through 
the  street.  Several  men  rush  to  intercept  the  brute. 
As  they  come  up  he  is  stamping  on  the  face  of  a  baby 
and  slashing  at  its  mother  with  the  knife.  He  swings 
with  his  brass  knuckles  at  the  would-be  rescuers.  They 
have  nothing  to  match  his  equipment.  The  street  is 
splashed  with  blood.  At  this  moment  a  weeping  woman, 
whose  children  are  huddled  where  they  cannot  escape, 
appeals  to  you  to  add  your  help  and  to  save  her  children. 
*  Madam/  you  say,  with  splendid  self-command,  *I 
realize  that  this  is  a  dreadful  affair.  With  my  help  that 
brute  could  perhaps  be  conquered  and  your  children 
saved.  But  there  is  an  awkward  circumstance  to 
which  I  must  call  your  attention  and  which  prevents 
my  participation.  /  dislike  one  of  those  men  who  have 
gone  to  the  rescue.'" 

"Damn  your  New  England  impertinence!"  snorted 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  103 

the  major,  smiting  the  table  beside  him.  "That's  a 
very  fine  piece  of  mawkish  balderdash.  You're  a  worthy 
champion  of  the  deceitful  old  monster — the  real  mon 
ster  in  the  game.  The  trouble  with  your  pretty  piece  of 
work  is  this  ..." 

I  didn't  learn  what  the  trouble  was,  for  we  were 
interrupted  by  the  coming  of  the  major's  daughter,  a 
tall,  bony  woman  topped  by  a  wonderful  black-plumed 
hat.  She  is  the  widow  of  an  alderman. 

When  I  had  been  introduced  the  major  burst  out 
with:  "There,  lad!  We  mustn't  come  to  blows.  We'll 
stop  at  the  hard  names!" 

The  storm  had  passed  from  old  Whelan's  face.  But 
I  was  sorry.  Sorry  we  had  wrangled.  Sorry  I  really 
know  so  little  about  Ireland — that  England  is  a  blun 
derer.  Sorry  for  evidence  of  unconquerable  bitterness 
in  the  world. 

in 

Did  I  come  to  the  city  at  the  best  or  the  worst  time? 

Will  the  far-blown  fumes  of  this  war  obscure  every 
thing  I  wish  to  see,  give  a  false  color  to  every  figure, 
an  unnatural  flavor  to  every  experience,  a  strident  dis 
sonance  to  every  tune  of  life? 

Or  will  the  war-jangled  nerves  of  this  spectator  group, 
listening,  watching,  appealing,  protesting,  brooding, 
scoffing,  leering,  praying,  more  completely  betray  the 
bitter  truth  about  men  and  women?  Has  war  torn 
away  the  smug  mask  of  civilization — even  here  so  far 
from  the  horror  itself? 

Is  there  to  be  a  "show-down"  for  all  humanity? 

One  thing  is  certain.  I  do  not  know  this  by  any 
rational  comparisons  with  group-men  of  the  past,  yet 
it  is  possible  to  see  the  inherent  sign.  The  thing  that  is 
certain  is  a  heightened  temperature,  a  touch  of  fever 
that  I  am  sure  is  tinging  even  the  simplest  phases  of 
life. 


104  THE   GREAT  DESIRE 

I  am  sure  I  will  not  get  an  impression  of  group-men 
as  they  used  to  be. 

Perhaps  nowhere  will  any  one  ever  again  see  any  sort 
of  men  quite  as  they  used  to  be. 

The  war  has  burned  some  of  the  world.  Much  of  the 
world  it  has  singed.  All  of  the  world  is  feeling  its  hot 
breath. 

So  that  I  am  seeing  that  impossible  thing,  a  suspended 
moment  between  past  and  future. 

I  am  seeing  a  doped  world.  .  .  . 

And  yet,  it  may  be  that  under  the  spell  of  this  awful 
drug,  this  tincture  of  fire  subtly  stealing  through  the 
veins  of  the  living  world,  men  will  see  visions  .  .  .  visions 
that  will  not  only  broadly  affect  all  that  they  may  do 
hereafter,  all  that  they  may  be  hereafter,  but  that  will 
in  amazing  detail  of  influence  transfigure  their  sense  of 
history,  their  ideas  of  destiny,  their  apprehensions  of 
desire. 

IV 

Rudley  has  been  brooding  over  the  airplanes  at 
Mineola.  He  has  asked  me  to  go  with  him  to  see  the 
work  of  the  airmen.  Perhaps  I  should  go.  It  would 
be  a  thrilling  thing  to  visualize  the  anatomy  of  these  sky 
dragons. 

He  asked  me  in  the  presence  of  Sarah  on  the  evening 
of  his  dinner  call.  Perhaps  he  had  some  intention  of 
inciting  her  to  join  us  in  the  excursion — a  chilly  business 
at  this  season. 

Sarah's  look  had  a  wish  in  it. 

There  was  something  luminously  graphic  about  Rud- 
ley's  description  of  the  planes.  When  he  made  the 
motion  of  curve  with  his  hands  to  indicate  the  moment 
of  leaving  the  ground  his  eyes  had  a  fanatical  gleam. 
He  is  bitten  hard  by  this  thing.  He  has  all  the  patter 
about  the  different  types,  the  engines,  the  systems  of 
-control,  the  variations  between  the  German  and  French 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  105 

and  British  makes,  and  the  great  things  Americans  are 
doing. 

Above  all  he  is  eloquent  in  the  matter  of  engines. 
The  room  seemed  to  grow  very  large,  its  ceiling  seemed 
to  melt  away,  when  he  used  the  word  "climbing." 

Climbing  .  .  .  climbing.  One  dwindles  in  the  great 
spaces  that  open  to  the  word. 

I  can't  quite  imagine  the  detail  of  an  engine. 

Somehow  Sarah  managed  to  give  Rudley  the  im 
pression  of  understanding  what  he  meant  when  he  said 
"reciprocating,"  and  made  a  plunging  motion  with  hi& 
fists.  And  when  he  emphasized  the  advantage  of  a 
rotary  action  "that  wouldn't  shake  the  liver  out  of  a 
plane"  she  was  looking  squarely  and  eagerly  into  his 
eyes. 

"You  mean,"  she  said,  "that  it  would  be  smooth  in 
stead  of  shivery." 

"Exactly." 

"Without  the  waste  of  power  where  the — the  piston 
thing — swings  over — at  the  bottom  and  top." 

"  Precisely !  A  true  rotary  is  all  push — pushing  every 
instant — with  no  rack  to  it  at  all.  Just  power — all  used." 

"I  see,"  said  Sarah. 

Rudley  blazed  with  appreciation  of  her  understanding 
— or  was  it  just  her  lucky  way  of  seeming  to  understand? 
I  can't  quite  believe  she  really  could  have  a  glimmering 
of  anything  so  intricate.  She  has  such  an  excluding- 
attitude  toward  complicated  things. 

I  remember  my  father  laboriously  analyzing  for  her 
the  idea  of  the  Trinity.  She  wouldn't  have  it. 

"Maybe  it  isn't  nice  of  me,"  she  said,  "but  I  never 
could  be  bothered  with  anything  so  complicated." 

And  here  she  was  pretending  to  see  the  difference  be 
tween  a  reciprocating  and  a  rotary  engine! 

One  result  of  the  engine  talk  was  that  we  all  trooped 
into  Rudley 's  apartment — my  aunt  in  the  procession,, 
to  see  the  thing  he  had  been  talking  about. 


106  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"It's  an  old  story  to  Anson,"  said  Rudley,  on  the  way. 
"He's  conservative  about  admitting  its  points.  But  I 
suspect  him  of  believing  that  it  may  actually  do  some 
thing." 

I  was  ready  enough  to  believe,  I  told  him,  but  compre 
hension  was  another  affair. 

That  made  an  odd  picture — the  group  of  us  in  the 
narrow  room,  with  the  littered  work-bench  and  the  little 
engine  shining  and  humming.  Rudley  explained  and 
pointed  out,  and  illustrated  by  means  of  blue-print  dia 
grams,  the  details  of  his  invention.  I  had  thought  him 
enthusiastic  when  I  was  the  sole  auditor  and  spectator. 
Now  the  real  passion  showed. 

Sarah,  I  have  no  doubt,  was  responsible.  She  fol 
lowed  every  point  with  that  preternatural  nimbleness 
so  characteristic  of  her  heightened  moments.  She 
alights  on  an  idea  in  the  manner  of  a  winged  creature; 
not  with  the  irregular  approach  of  a  butterfly,  but  with 
the  clean-circling  precision  of  a  sure-winged  and  sure 
footed  bird.  She  may  find  only  the  extremity  of  a 
branch,  but  she  alights  crisply  and  confidently. 

Sarah  was  Rudley 's  audience  when  the  exposition 
drew  close  to  the  subtleties  of  the  contrivance  that 
is  to  revolutionize  the  air  game.  My  aunt  and  I 
occupied  the  background  of  the  strange  scene,  she, 
I  suspect,  as  much  as  myself,  studying  the  two  rather 
than  the  engine. 

Yet  it  was  my  aunt  who  asked  the  astonishingly  acute 
question,  "How  about  the  weight  per  horse-power?" 

"Just  half,"  announced  Rudley,  as  he  swung  sharply 
to  his  questioner.  "Just  half  in  comparison  with  the 
average  of  the  present  engines — that's  the  way  I  figure 
it  out.  And  you  know  what  that  must  mean." 

Sarah  was  permitted  to  hold  the  piece  of  wood  against 
the  driving-rod. 

"Press  hard!"  urged  Rudley,  his  face  shining  in  pride 
of  the  power. 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  107 

Sarah  in  quite  evident  elation  pressed  hard,  the  engine 
humming  on. 

She  must  have  been  less  dexterous  than  usual,  for  the 
wood  slid  from  the  end  of  the  whirring  rod  and  she  ut 
tered  a  little  exclamation. 

There  was  blood  on  one  of  her  fingers. 

Rudley's  remorse  was  a  painful  thing  to  see.  He 
caught  hold  of  that  scratched  hand  as  if  to  deny  the 
injury  the  right  to  be. 

"Too  bad!     I'm  awfully  sorry!     I  never  thought — " 

"It's  nothing,"  said  Sarah,  dabbing  at  the  scratch 
with  her  handkerchief  and  turning  a  smiling  face  to 
him. 

"What  a  beastly  shame — my  engine — to  hurt  you!" 
It  was  as  if  he  accentuated  the  "you." 

He  shut  off  the  current.  As  the  machine  stopped  I 
saw  him  stare  at  the  end  of  the  little  shaft.  There  was 
a  faint  stain  at  the  edge. 

"You  have  made  a  blood  covenant  with  it,"  he  said, 
in  almost  an  awed  voice.  He  joined  my  aunt  in  an  in 
spection  of  the  injury,  expressed  his  chagrin  that  he  had 
smashed  the  bottle  holding  the  last  of  his  peroxide,  and 
was  for  going  out  at  once  to  get  some  .  .  .  unless  my  aunt 
— had  she  any? 

I  slipped  away  to  our  drug-cupboard  and  the  formula 
of  repair  was  soon  happily  finished. 

"I'm  always  doing  it  myself,"  laughed  Rudley,  with 
uneasy  eyes  upon  Sarah. 

We  sat  for  a  while  in  Rudley's  parlor.  Sarah's  in 
terested  glance  elicited  more  than  any  earlier  curiosity 
of  mine.  The  woman  with  the  wonderful  eyes  was  Rud 
ley's  mother.  The  saddle  had  been  bought  from  a  young 
Nevada  sheriff  to  whom  a  grateful  bunch  of  citizens  had 
presented  a  gorgeous  new  affair.  The  tall  clock  belonged 
to  Zorn.  It  was  a  good  clock,  too,  but  in  common  with 
other  clocks  it  needed  to  be  wound,  which  brought  up 
extraordinary  difficulties.  Rudley  was  convinced  that 


108  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

the  faculty  for  remembering  to  wind  a  clock,  especially 
a  clock  with  weights,  was  a  rare,  perhaps  a  superior, 
gift.  Zorn  seemed  to  feel  that,  no  matter  what  you  did, 
the  weights  were  always  at  the  bottom.  Rudley  never 
found  himself  thinking  strongly  about  the  clock  until 
he  had  noticed  a  great  many  times  that  it  was  twenty 
minutes  to  five.  Stokes  had  promised  to  devote  him 
self  to  it.  He  wound  it  every  evening,  with  ostentatious 
precision,  for  four  days,  though  once  a  week  would  have 
been  enough.  Evidently  he  had  exhausted  his  devotion 
in  these  first  paroxysms.  Anyway,  the  clock  had  been 
silent  for  a  long  time. 

The  cabinet,  too,  belonged  to  Zorn.  It  had  a  history, 
rather  sad  by  all  that  Rudley  knew,  with  something  about 
a  Florentine  woman  of  wonderful  beauty  whose  face 
had  been  disfigured— a  frightful  diagonal  mark — by  a 
jealous  beast  with  whom  she  had  run  away  to  America. 
...  It  was  a  pity  Zorn  was  not  there  to  tell  the  story — 
to  tell  how  the  thing  came  to  him. 

There  were  objects  belonging  to  Rudley  that  were 
placed  before  Sarah  and  my  aunt,  among  them  a  curious 
cane  with  a  head  of  exquisitely  carved  ivory,  showing  a 
running  horse,  presented  to  Rudley  by  "a  wonderful 
woman" — the  daughter  of  a  mine  operator;  a  queer 
bit  of  gold  quartz;  Indian  work;  photographs  of  Nome, 
Monterey,  Lake  Louise,  several  famous  bridges,  and  the 
most  interesting  engineering  stunt  he  ever  had  the  luck 
to  have  a  hand  in,  at  Chicago.  There  were,  too,  cer 
tain  flash-light  pictures  taken  in  the  bowels  of  New 
York 

I  could  not  fix  my  mind  on  these  things.  The  great 
thing,  the  overshadowing  thing — Sarah  and  Rudley — 
filled  these  moments  with  an  absurdly  excluding  impor 
tance,  as  of  something  impending. 

Which  I  suppose  would  be  the  attitude  of  mind  of  a 
nice,  utterly  formulated,  somewhat  rabbinical,  male  old 
maid. 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  109 

How  much  of  this  feeling  belongs  to  the  situation  with 
out  regard  to  the  man? 

Is  my  aunt  playing  a  game? 

Does  Sarah  see  what  is  happening — to  herself  as  well 
as  to  Rudley? 


Sarah  is  to  go  with  us  to  see  the  fliers  at  Mineola. 

Meanwhile  mother's  edict  is  that  we  spend  Christmas 
at  Naugaway.  Her  letter  betrays  certain  curiosities. 

"You  and  Sarah  [she  says]  have  not  been  especially 
generous  in  letters,  and  to  tell  the  truth,  I  am  not  always 
clear  as  to  what  you  are  doing.  You  two  went  away 
in  such  an  expectant  state  of  mind,  and  (in  your  case  at 
least)  with  such  devoted  intentions,  that  you  must  for 
give  me  for  wondering  at  times  just  what  road  you  are 
traveling.  Everything  sounds  so  dreadfully  experi 
mental.  I  suppose  I  ought  to  remember  that  it  is  all 
experimental.  I  am  not  surprised  to  hear  that  you 
haven't  gone  far  with  the  book.  Perhaps  I  don't  need 
to  remind  you,  my  dear,  that  books  are  like  babies. 
There  must  be  a  long  gestation.  Permit  the  prospective 
grandmother  of  a  book  to  administer  this  sage  caution. 
I  have  told  you  that  I  once  started  to  write  a  book  (about 
wild-flowers) — but  you  came  along  instead.  And  then 
Sarah — my  collected  works,  in  two  volumes" 

(One  volume  wretchedly  bound!) 

"I  don't  know  much  about  New  York.  But  I  know 
something  of  its  state  of  mind.  That  knowledge  is  to 
be  had,  you  know,  from  a  few  examples  as  well  as  from 
a  few  visits.  It  is  not  altogether  a  pleasant  state  of 
mind — to  the  outsider;  mostly,  I  think,  because  it  seems 
so  largely  a  state  of  uneasiness.  You  tell  me — every  one 
mentions  it,  and  has  been  mentioning  it  for  as  long  as 
I  can  remember — that  the  city  is  frightfully  ripped  up. 
This  always  seems  to  be  its  mental  condition  also.  Per 
haps  a  city  couldn't  afford  to  sit  back  and  be  comfortable. 


110  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Yet  it  is  tiresome — as  with  certain  women — to  have  New 
York  always  talking  about  its  operations.  I  hope  you 
won't  let  the  clutter  of  the  city,  the  physical  side  of  it, 
impede  your  way  to  the  thing  you  have  gone  after. 
You  say  'men  in  the  mass/  I  suppose  they  all  are 
men  just  the  same.  We  shall  talk  over  these  things. 
Though  not  too  much.  I  want  to  get  you  away  from 
city  thinking  for  a  few  days." 

There  is  one  passage  in  the  letter  that  promises  a  defi 
nite  topic  of  discussion  at  home,  however  delicate  the 
topic  may  turn  out  to  be. 

"You  must  know,"  she  remarks,  rather  abruptly,  "that 
young  Rudley  is  not  very  well  spoken  of  here.  On  the 
contrary.  It  may  not  mean  anything  very  damaging 
that  he  broke  with  his  father.  That  old  pirate  is  not 
much  of  an  asset  to  a  boy,  for  all  his  money.  But  I  seem 
to  have  heard  that  young  Rudley  went  the  pace.  In  your 
study  of  men,  my  dear,  please  include  your  neighbor." 

Thus  to  be  admonished  at  a  time  when  I  was  feeling 
a  bit  guilty  over  too  much  study  of  my  neighbor  has  left 
my  emotions  in  a  tangle. 

Actually  to  study  any  one  for  a  utilitarian  purpose, 
even  for  a  protective  purpose,  would  always  appear  to 
me  as  too  mandatory,  too  artificial,  to  be  comfortable. 
I  have  no  Sherlock  Holmes  instinct.  I  could  leap  at  his 
throat  and  throttle  him  to  a  confession  of  anything  he 
ought  to  confess.  But  as  for  climbing  the  fence  of  his 
personality  and  peeping  through  the  back  windows  of 
his  soul — no,  I  can't  and  won't  do  it. 


VI 

It  was  just  as  well,  perhaps,  that  a  sharply  divergent 
incident  should  carry  me  away  from  certain  thoughts — 
even  if  the  substituted  image  was  a  punch-bowl. 

A  punch-bowl.  That  is  what  stands  out,  though 
there  was  plenty  else. 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  ill 

I  think  it  was  green. 

It  was  on  a  wabbly  table.  The  liquid  within  was  red 
dish — naturally.  Any  one  might  have  tried  it.  There 
was  nothing  sinister  or  insistent  about  the  way  it  tasted. 
It  had  a  kindly  taste,  a  sort  of  well-bred  kindliness, 
though  more,  I  suppose,  like  a  perfect  gentleman  than 
a  perfect  lady. 

Circumstances  led  to  my  trying  three  cups — or  per 
haps  it  was  four.  Glass  cups,  of  moderate  size. 

My  first  impression  was  simply  of  pleasant  refresh 
ment.  It  was  on  the  following  morning  that  I  felt  dis 
turbed — absurdly  disturbed.  I  have  written  nothing 
in  the  days  between. 

Though  this  sort  of  thing  has  happened  millions  of 
times  and  has  been  discussed  millions  of  times — possibly 
nothing  could  be  more  ludicrous  than  to  mention  it  at 
all — it  was  a  new  experience  (I  mean  the  punch-bowl 
— the  day  after)  and  has  given  me  a  fresh  and  intensely 
vivid  sense  of  man's  sharp  variation  from  other  animals. 

Nothing  kindles  platitudes  in  a  man  like  something 
wrong  with  his  insides.  .  .  . 

In  a  little  while  there  will  be  no  more  punch-bowls, 
except  as  shelf  ornaments  along  with  snuff-boxes,  crowns, 
nose-rings,  opium-pipes,  handcuffs,  hat-pins,  medicine- 
bottles,  and  other  symbols  of  historic  tastes,  passions, 
and  infirmities. 

There  will  be  an  interval  in  which  some  one  will  have 
opportunity  to  invent  another  spiritual  test  of  equiva 
lent  portability  and  potency.  But  the  thing  that  gives 
significance  to  punch-bowls  seems  likely  to  pass. 

A  man  who  sat  next  to  the  wabbly  table  made  this 
statement  oracularly. 

"The  white  shadow  of  Prohibition  steals  across  the 
map,"  he  said.  "Russia  has  shut  out  vodka.  France 
has  forsworn  her  insidious  absinthe.  England  turns 
her  ruddy  face  from  brandy.  And  a  fearful  virtue  has 
affected  the  United  States  like  a  seizure.  Let  us,  then," 


112  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

and  he  looked  about  the  room,  "drink  to  our  departing 
friend !  A  swashbuckling  chap  at  times,  often  egregious 
and  effusive,  sometimes  subtly  cynical  like  a  peevish 
poet,  full  of  noble  contradictions  as  befits  distilled  tem 
perament;  cajoling  and  cantankerous,  romantic,  ana 
lytical,  illuminating;  reddening  with  a  lusty  love  of 
life,  or  paling  in  the  white  heat  of  large  desires;  waving 
his  wizard  wand  to  the  leveling  of  obstacles,  the  suffusion 
of  pallid  purposes,  the  garnishing  of  bodily  beauty  with 
gems  ineffable,  the  exalting  of  every  image  in  the  sham 
bling  spectacle  of  life.  I  drink  to  our  departing  friend!" 

He  drank  solemnly  and  simply,  quite  in  the  spirit  of 
a  remark  he  had  made  to  me  a  few  moments  before. 

"My  young  friend,"  he  said,  "do  not  confuse  this  with 
gastric  gratification.  Merely  physical  functions  are 
concerned  with  needs  or  repletions.  You  say,  *I  have 
just  had  some/  That  is  not  the  point.  Each  drink  has 
its  own  entirely  independent  considerations.  A  drink 
like  this  is  not  a  mere  physical  function.  It  is  a  ritual." 

.  .  .  Sarah  and  I  went  together  to  the  quaint  place 
where  this  happened,  with  no  thought  of  punch-bowls; 
in  fact,  with  no  predispositions  whatever. 

The  fact  that  Laura  Sherrick  made  the  plea  for  our 
going  gave  the  only  hint  I  had  as  to  the  character  of  the 
incident.  As  a  hint  I  found  it  meaningless.  Sarah  may 
have  accomplished  a  better  guess. 

We  didn't  go  into  that  after  I  had  inquired,  "What 
sort  of  thing  is  this  to  be?" 

And  Sarah  had  made  answer,  "A  meeting  at  a  poet's 
place." 

This  sounded  like  dabbling,  and  God  knows  this  is 
no  time  for  dabbling.  .  .  . 

The  poet  was  Lawrence  Pine.  He  looks  like  a  poet, 
which  was  a  great  shock,  for  the  artistic  class  has  stopped 
looking  artistic  as  a  habit.  I  don't  mean  that  he  is 
altogether  the  poet  of  tradition,  yet  his  black  hair  has 
rather  a  romantic  wave  in  it,  and  his  deep  eyes,  wide 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  113 

and  large,  have  too  sharp  a  glint  when  his  face  lights 
up.  He  is  big-boned,  with  a  kind  of  neurasthenic 
radiance  that  is  likely  to  make  one  either  sympathetic 
or  uneasy. 

Pine  himself  opened  the  door  when  we  had  climbed 
four  flights  of  steps  in  a  musty  building  facing  the  fire- 
escapes  at  the  back-street  end  of  an  old  department  store. 

Evidently  Laura  Sherrick  had  been  watching,  for  she 
was  at  Pine's  elbow  in  a  moment,  introducing  us  out  of 
our  embarrassment — so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  escape 
embarrassment  on  emerging  through  a  single  door  into 
the  midst  of  things. 

The  square  room  in  which  we  found  ourselves  was 
comparatively  bare  as  to  wall  spaces — ostentatiously  so, 
one  would  say.  There  were,  indeed,  some  deep-colored 
prints  tacked  upon  the  painted  plaster.  A  high  open 
case  of  shelves  of  a  gray-green  color  filled  the  middle  of 
one  space.  TKe  shelves  bulged  with  books,  many  of 
them  with  foreign-looking  paper  covers.  There  were  a 
davenport  partly  covered  by  a  tattered  but  beautifully 
embroidered  silken  robe;  a  couch  doing  service  as  a 
divan;  and  a  venerable-looking  piano.  The  wabbly 
table  stood  near  a  door  leading  to  a  smaller  room  beyond, 
which  betrayed  some  of  the  features  of  a  kitchenette. 
It  was  upon  a  round  black  table  in  a  corner,  littered 
with  books  and  papers,  that  Pine  heaped  all  outdoor 
garments,  excepting  only  hats,  which  were  perched  in 
a  rack  bridging  the  space  above. 

"Perhaps  I  ought  to  have  piloted  you,"  said  Miss 
Sherrick,  while  Pine  was  again  flinging  open  the  door  to 
other  comers.  "But  evidently  my  directions  were  effec 
tive.  You  look  wonderfully  well,  Sarah!" 

We  were  introduced  to  a  Mrs.  Benderson,  a  wiry, 
flushed  little  woman  wearing  horn-rimmed  glasses,  and 
a  Mr.  Jorell,  a  nervous  person  with  large  teeth  shining 
under  one  of  those  tooth-brush  mustaches. 

The  new-comers  were  a  big,  jovial  man  introduced 


114  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

as  Bruno  Fischer,  and  a  Miss  Latch,  a  girl  with  startling 
eyebrows  who  wore  a  yellow  robe  such  as  I  have  asso 
ciated  with  mandarins  and  clairvoyants,  and  who  is, 
after  all,  only  a  rich  person  with  collections. 

Pine  asked  Miss  Latch,  "Is  Baby  coming?" 

"If  she  can  dig  Bud  out,"  replied  Miss  Latch  from  the 
cloak  corner. 

Pine  laughed.  "How  Bud  does  hate  to  move  after 
dinner!" 

He  turned  to  those  of  us  who  occupied  the  davenport. 
"If  they  ever  put  this  country  on  a  diet,  something  might 
be  done.  Why  is  it  that  food  should  brighten  women 
and  send  men  into  a  stupor?" 

"I  should  object  to  your  diet  if  that  would  make  it 
the  other  way  about,"  declared  Miss  Latch,  adjusting 
herself  in  a  sort  of  steamer  chair  that  flanked  the  piano. 
Then  she  suddenly  sat  forward. 

"I  believe  that's  Baby  coming  now." 

A  heavy  footfall  sounded  beyond  the  door. 

Pine  greeted  with  an  intimate  friendliness  a  woman 
somewhat  in  my  aunt  Portia's  style  of  architecture,  an 
immense,  Brunhild  sort  of  woman,  wearing  a  gorgeously 
beaded  white  gown,  and  a  wrap  of  scarlet  edged  with 
black  fur.  Very  carefully  arranged  tendrils  of  golden 
hair  shone  under  the  sweep  of  a  tumultuous  black  hat. 

"So  good  of  you  to  come,  Baby!"  cried  Mr.  Jorell,  his 
bristles  quivering  cordially. 

Baby,  who  had  an  elaborately  prepared,  somewhat 
masculine  face,  and  who  was  breathing  heavily  from  the 
four  flights,  glanced  as  if  rather  preferring  the  davenport 
— the  corner  seat,  to  be  exact — and  I  removed  myself  to 
make  her  choice  possible.  If  I  had  offered  myself  as 
a  footstool,  had  pushed  out  the  side  wall,  or  had  placed 
the  piano  on  end,  I'm  sure  she  would  have  taken  the 
matter  for  granted  in  quite  the  same  way. 

She  is  a  Mrs.  Kennis.  Her  entrance  made  the  coming 
of  Mr.  Kennis  seem  quite  incidental,  though  Mr.  Kennis 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  115 

is  an  important-looking  person,  if  somewhat  fragile,  and 
having  the  effect  of  being  acutely  shaved  and  over 
trained. 

"Bud,"  said  Pine  to  Mr.  Kennis,  "I  know  this  is  a 
sacrifice — " 

"You're  damned  right,"  said  Mr.  Kennis,  pulling  off 
his  gloves. 

"But  man  does  not  live  by  leather  alone — " 

"You  might  have  a  little  sleep  on  the  coats,"  suggested 
Miss  Latch,  gleefully. 

Mr.  Kennis,  returning  from  the  coat  corner,  ignored 
this  to  glance  about  the  room,  rubbing  his  hands  per 
emptorily. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "what  is  it  to  be?" 

I  had  quite  the  same  curiosity. 

Pine  was  about  to  answer  when  two  more  figures  ap 
peared  in  the  door;  one  a  brawny,  sun-browned  lad  with 
noticeable  blue  eyes  and  an  awkward  manner,  made 
known  as  Mr.  Hugh  McGarry;  the  other  a  man  who 
looked  like  a  convivial  Csesar  as  a  convivial  Csesar  might 
have  looked  in  a  tweed  suit.  His  name  is  Aaron  Stein. 
It  was  quite  by  chance  that  he  found  an  inadequate 
chair  beside  the  little  table  on  which  the  punch-bowl 
was  afterward  deposited.  I  have  quoted  a  segment  of 
his  remarks  in  that  neighborhood. 

By  this  time  the  conversation,  as  the  saying  is,  had 
become  general,  and,  in  the  total,  rather  loud.  The  rich 
Miss  Latch  was  particularly  shrill,  and  a  rumble  that  was 
more  to  be  felt  than  heard  came  from  Fischer. 

Nevertheless,  Pine  was  able  to  produce  silence  by 
bringing  his  hands  together. 

Thus  began  a  strange  two  hours.  Strange  because, 
though  it  was  simply  an  "evening,"  it  jumbled  sentiment 
and  plain  speech  in  a  way  that  was  new  to  me. 

Pine  struck  the  note  by  saying,  in  his  rather  gentle 
yet  penetrating  voice,  "One  little  point  as  a  prelude: 
We  shall  say  nothing  to-night  about  the  war — " 


116  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Out  of  deference  to  Fischer?"  asked  Stein. 

"Out  of  deference  to  Decency  in  the  presence  of  the 
Unspeakable." 

"You're  beginning  it  yourself,"  declared  Stein,  with 
a  chuckle. 

"  No.    Nothing  more  shall  be  said.    I  shall  see  to  that." 

Stein  was  not  so  easily  checked.  "Behold!"  he  ex 
claimed,  in  a  stage  whisper,  "an  Anarchist  laying  down 
law!" 

Pine  frankly  joined  the  laugh.  "Anarchism,"  ob 
served  Pine,  "is  the  pursuit  of  beauty,  not  of  ugliness. 
So  that  if  I  am  permitted  to  determine  the  path  of  this 
excursion  we  shall  keep  close  to  clean,  strong,  honest 
things.  Music,  though  it  is  not  always  clean,  nor  strong, 
nor  honest,  is  an  effort  toward  beauty,  so  that  I  think 
we  shall  do  right  in  having  a  musical  cocktail  at  the 
start-off.  This  announcement  will  cause  anxiety  to 
Bud  Kennis  and  incite  unspoken  rebellion  in  the  breast 
of  Aaron  Stein — " 

Kennis,  who  with  the  connivance  of  a  sofa  pillow  was 
seated  on  the  floor  against  the  wall,  had  indeed  emitted 
a  sleepy  sigh. 

" — two  gentlemen  of  active  rather  than  original  minds, 
and  original  rather  than  active  bodies.  But  this  is  a 
heterogeneous  world.  You  have  not  been  brought  here 
for  forcible  mental  feeding,  and  attention,  even  that  of 
Bud  Kennis  and  Aaron  Stein,  shall  be  rewarded.  I  am 
going  to  read  a  poem — " 

"Of  course,"  said  Stein. 

" — despite  any  possible  interruptions.  After  certain 
other  good  things  you  shall  have  some  punch." 

"At  just  what  hour?"  murmured  Kennis. 

"At  the  psychological  moment.  I  meant  to  have 
wafers  with  it.  But  perhaps  you  have  been  broke 
yourselves." 

"I'll  go  out  and  stake  you  to  some,"  said  Kennis, 
"while  vou're  reading  the  poem." 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  117 

"Silence!"  commanded  Pine.  "Mrs.  Benderson  is 
going  to  play.  ..." 

The  performances  of  the  evening  I  should  have  re 
garded  as  unimportant  save  for  the  significance  I  found 
in  the  subject  of  Pine's  poem.  .  .  . 

To  be  sure,  the  incidents  were  sometimes  striking — as 
when  Baby  Kennis  recited,  with  a  heaving  intensity, 
a  tender  piece  of  Strindberg.  And  there  was  something 
theatrical  in  Pine's  casual  introduction  of  young  Hugh 
McGarry  as  "by  affection  a  singer  and  by  profession  a 
hod-carrier."  It  appears  that  the  lad  really  is  a  hod- 
carrier — though  Fischer,  who  knows  impresarios,  says 
he  is  "going  to  change  all  that."  (Pine,  I  understand, 
was  reading  a  manuscript  in  the  street  when  he  stumbled 
over  some  building  material.  McGarry  picked  him  up. 
They  would  have  exchanged  cards  if  McGarry  had  been 
provided.  At  all  events,  Pine  invited  him  to  his  place 
for  that  evening  and  made  the  discovery  by  which  we 
were  duly  thrilled  at  this  later  time.  I  never  have  heard 
a  more  wonderful  voice.) 

Pine's  poem  was  called  "The  Desire  of  Love." 

His  reading  began  in  an  eager  half-voice  that  grew 
more  intense  and  then  strident  as  he  went  on. 

It  is  hard  to  judge  words  when  we  have  the  feeling 
that  formed  them  too  vividly  before  us. 

He  made  Love  seem  to  be  the  beginning  and  the  end. 
He  began  with  protoplasm  and  ended  with  chiffon.  He 
made  Love  a  flame  lighting  the  gloom  of  a  crawling  world, 
the  guiding-star  of  a  groping  civilization,  a  jewel,  gor 
geous  beyond  the  composite  glory  of  all  imaginable  gems 
of  the  earth,  blazing  on  the  bosom  of  Life.  At  its  touch 
dead  things  breathed  and  leaped.  It  dissolved  the 
granite  of  Greed.  To  the  eye  of  Genius  it  was  micro 
scope  and  telescope.  To  Labor  it  handed  a  sword.  To 
Force  it  handed  a  flower.  It  laughed  in  the  bubbles  of 
wine,  sang  in  the  bare  nerves  of  a  violin,  put  pulse  under 

shining  shoulders  of  marble,  suffused  with  an  ultimate 
9 


118  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

color  and  drenched  with  the  supreme  perfume  the  flesh 
and  tendrils  of  Being. 

He  was,  of  course,  talking  about  Passion,  which  he 
first  revealed  in  a  drapery  of  glittering  words,  then  put 
forward  in  a  naked  splendor.  .  .  . 

There  was  one  passage,  in  the  first  person,  describing 
a  scene  with  his  love  .  .  .  circumstantially.  There  was 
much  about  her  beautiful  body. 

Poetic  license  is  a  wonderful  thing.  The  speech  of  a 
perfect  gentleman  may  wander  anywhere  ...  if  it  has 
feet.  A  man  who  in  daily  contact  is  quite  accustomed  to 
recognize  those  reservations  which  belong  to  even  an 
animal  modesty  can,  if  he  appears  as  a  poet,  stand  up — 
in  a  drawing-room,  for  that  matter — undress  his  mind, 
strip  every  vestige  of  covering  from  the  most  personal 
and  private  emotions  .  .  . 

If  we  imagine  in  print  such  far-flung  images  of  experi 
ence,  how  should  we  expect  the  profane  outsider  to  feel 
at  seeing  a  girl  like  Laura  Sherrick,  for  example,  at  dinner 
with  Pine?  I  find  myself  wondering  whether  a  certain 
kind  of  poet  thinks  of  such  a  matter.  .  .  . 

Yet  Pine's  poem  had  sincerity — or  let  us  say,  sinceri 
ties — and  more  than  a  tinkle  of  beauty. 

There  was  a  line  that  I  should  like  to  steal  for  a  text 
in  the  Book.  It  occurred  in  this  way: 

— with  lips 

Fused  in  the  flame  of  love,  to  find 
At  last! — at  last! — that  answer  there, 
That  garden  of  the  Golden  Wish. 

The  garden  of  the  Golden  Wish!  .  .  . 


VII 

"This  punch,"  said  Stein,  surveying  those  of  us  who 
seemed  free  to  listen,  "is  the  only  really  intelligent  thing 
that  has  happened  here  to-night.  Personally  I  am 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  119 

averse  to  alcohol,  but  this  at  least  has  a  meaning, 
whereas — " 

"Stein  and  punch-bowl,"  murmured  Jorell,  submitting 
cups  to  Baby  Kennis  and  Mrs.  Benderson. 

"Jorell,"  continued  Stein,  "has  the  sort  of  mind  that 
can  think  of  a  thing  like  that  without  injuring  itself. 
Jorell  is  essentially  a  mixture  of  persiflage  and  camou 
flage.  Witness  his  momentary  occupation!  You  will 
remember — if  not,  you  may  refer  to  Pine,  who  has  con 
sented  to  spare  from  destruction  any  classic  with  a 
naughty  woman  in  it — that  it  was  Ganem,  that  *  slave 
of  love,'  who,  having  offended  the  caliph  and  being  con 
demned  to  death,  escaped  in  the  disguise  of  a  waiter." 

I  liked  Stein;  and  McGarry  had  the  ring  of  true 
metal.  I  wish  I  could  see  him  carrying  a  hod.  It  would 
give  the  mind  an  earth  contact,  a  grip  on  real  things.  .  .  . 

I  was  staring  at  the  boy's  face  as  he  stood  between 
Miss  Latch  and  Baby  Kennis  when  Laura  Sherrick 
touched  my  arm. 

"These  people,"  she  said,  "don't  matter.  They  are 
just  people.  It  is  Pine  who  counts.  I  wanted  you  to 
know  him." 

My  impulse  was  to  say,  "You  mean  that  you  wanted 
Sarah  to  know  him,"  for  it  was  to  Sarah  that  he  was 
talking  at  this  moment. 

But  I  said  only,  "Does  he  count?" 

"He  is  one  of  the  few  honest  men  I  know." 

"An  honest  Anarchist." 

"Yes." 

"In  the  matter  of  being  honest  and  being  right — " 

"Only  honest  people  are  right." 

We  were  looking  squarely  at  each  other  now. 

"Is  that  the  beginning  of  Anarchism?"  I  asked. 

"It  is  the  beginning  of  everything — everything  worth 
while." 

"Are  you  honest?' 

"Not  yet.     I'm  coming  to  it — I  hope." 


120  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"When  you  come  to  it  will  you  be  an  Anarchist?'* 

"Not  necessarily.     But  I  shall  be  right." 

When  I  turned  my  eyes  from  her  for  a  moment  she 
said,  "I  know  what  you're  thinking — that  it  must  be 
very  comfortable  to  be  so  sure." 

"No,"  I  said.  "I  wasn't  thinking  that.  I  was  think 
ing  of  the  awful  mess  of  a  lot  of  people  each  being  honest 
— and  each  confident  of  being  right." 

"You're  imagining  something  that  hasn't  happened 
yet,"  she  declared.  "It  isn't  the  honest  who  make  the 
mess.  It's  the  big  admixture  of  the  dishonest — and  the 
imperfectly  honest." 

"Like  us?"  I  suggested. 

"Like  us." 

She  dropped  into  a  brass  dish  the  fragment  of  a 
cigarette.  I  felt  as  if  she  had  dropped  the  subject. 
Anyway,  when  she  turned  to  me  again  she  said,  abruptly : 

"You  don't  like  to  see  me  smoking,  do  you?" 

"No,"  I  said.  But  this  was  not  what  I  was  thinking. 
I  was  wondering  whether  she  thought  it  honest  to  know 
Rudley  and  to  have  concealed  the  fact. 

"It  is  the  New  England  side  of  you,"  she  asserted,  con 
clusively.  "It  sticks." 

"What  became  of  the  New  England  side  of  you?"  I 
asked. 

"I  guess  I  still  have  it.  But  I  don't  believe  it  is  the 
same  side.  You  know,"  she  went  on,  flecking  at  a  fold 
of  the  long  amber-colored  one-piece  thing  she  wore,  "you 
have  the  makings  of  a  militant  monk." 

"I  don't  know  about  militant  monks,"  I  said.  "I 
suppose  you  mean  something  acidulous  and  fanatical." 

She  shook  her  head.  "No.  Not  exactly  that.  I 
think  you  have  a  correcting  instinct — " 

"Because  I  don't  happen  to  adore  to  see  you  smok 
ing." 

"Because  that  is  so  much  like  you.' 

"You  have  explained,"  I  said,  "one  reason  why  men 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  121 

are  imperfectly  honest.  You  ask  me  if  I  like  to  see 
you  smoking.  I  say,  'No.'  Then  you  call  me  a  militant 
monk." 

"Oh,  not  yet!"  she  protested.  "Only  the  makings. 
I  have  the  makings  of  a  .  .  ." 

She  halted  sharply.  "What's  the  use?"  she  said, 
after  the  pause.  "We  lie  a  lot  to  one  another,  don't  we? 
Maybe  it's  just  because  we're  all  restless." 

"What  do  you  want?'9  I  asked  her. 

"Want?"  She  showed  her  amazingly  white  teeth. 
"Want?  I  suppose  if  I  knew  I  should  go  and  get  it — 
unless  it  was  something  we  can't  go  after — " 

"Such  as—" 

"Such  as  those  beginning  things — beginning  things 
that  can't  be  put  back."  Her  eyes  wandered  and  the 
noise  of  the  talk  swirled  around  us.  A  hardness  crept 
into  the  lines  of  her  face. 

"Look  at  these  people.  How  do  you  suppose  they 
would  answer  that  funny  question  of  yours?  Don't  you 
suppose  the  thing  that  many  of  them  want  most  is  some 
thing  they  have  lost?" 

"Let  us  take  McGarry,"  I  urged — for  this  was  all  a  bit 
solemn.  "  He  has  found  something.  He  wants  to  sing — 
above  everything.  You  can  see  it  radiating  from  him." 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "I  envy  McGarry.  I  envy  people 
who  know  what  they  want  and  can  at  least  see  it.  And 
I  guess  I  envy  you — not  that  New  England  side,  of 
course — but  you  know  what  you  want  to  do.  You 
know.  And  you  are  doing  it.  Isn't  that  so?" 

I  admitted  that  it  was  so — even  if  it  was  foolish. 

She  laughed.  "Earnestly  foolish?  I'm  sure  it  would 
be  that  way!  But  you  need  more  than  that,  Mr.  Pro 
fessor.  You  must  manage  to  make  a  complete  fool  of 
yourself  somehow — and  find  out  that  you  have  done  it. 
That  will  do  you  a  lot  of  good.  It  will  loosen  you  up." 

"What  would  you  suggest?" 

"Well,  that's  foolish  enough  to  be  a  good  start.     When 


122  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

you  make  a  fool  of  yourself — the  necessary  out-and-out 
kind — it  won't  be  on  a  prescription.  I  might,  though, 
for  a  small  experiment,  suggest  that  you  ask  me  to  have 
some  punch."  .  .  . 

She  repeated  this  to  Sarah  when  we  three  had  gone 
away  together.  "And  it's  foolish  for  you  two  to  go  out 
of  your  way  to  see  me  home.  I  don't  like  being  toted." 

"But  suppose,"  I  said,  "that  we  had  no  kindly  in 
tentions  at  all?  Suppose  we  simply  turned  in  here  to 
finish  the  conversation?" 

"Still  quibbling!"  she  flung  out  at  the  door. 

VIII 

The  night  air  grew  sharp  as  we  continued  our  walk 
toward  home.  Sarah  gripped  my  arm  with  a  little  shiver. 

I  waited  for  a  word  about  Pine,  a  direct  word,  or  one 
round  about.  Instead  she  remarked: 

"To-morrow  we  go  to  see  the  fliers." 

She  looked  up  at  the  panel  of  stars. 

"It  will  be  cold,"  I  said.  "Better  wear  something 
thick." 

"Thick"  amused  Sarah.  "Everything  thick  isn't 
warm,"  she  informed  me. 

"Neither  is  everything  thin,"  I  retorted,  "such  as 
women  are  so  fond  of  wearing." 

"I  don't  expect  to  fly.  They  say  it  is  frightfully  cold 
when  you  go  away  up." 

"And  when  you're  whizzing." 

She  was  silent  for  a  space. 

"I  suppose,"  she  said  then,  "it  would  make  a  differ 
ence  who  was — driving.  ..." 

"As  to  how  warm  you  would  be?" 

"No!   no! — as  to  how  safe  you  would  feel." 

"I  see,"  I  said.  "Your  thoughts  are  flying.  I  fancied 
that  maybe  you  would  be  thinking  about  that — party." 

"Funny,  wasn't  it?" 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  123 

"Rather." 

She  spoke  of  Miss  Latch,  and  Hugo  Fischer  and 
McGarry's  "Mother  Machree,"  and  something  droll 
Laura  Sherrick  had  said  about  Sir  Orville  Panning, 
apropos  his  speech  at  the  Midnight  Club.  Never  a 
word  about  Pine. 

The  simple  thing  would  have  been  to  ask  her  what  she 
thought  about  him.  She  would  have  given  some  sort 
of  an  answer.  There  are  people  who  are  quite  content 
with  answers  because  they  count  them  as  opinions. 
They  run  about  with  interrogatory  siphons  sucking  ex 
pressions  out  of  other  people.  Mostly  they  are  people 
who  say,  "Oh,  do  you  think  so?" 

Very  likely  there  is  a  good  deal  that  is  absurd  in  family 
reticences,  in  reticences  between  friends.  So  many  mar 
ried  people  show  this  trait  that  one  must  conclude  that 
it  sprouts  naturally  in  the  soil  of  propinquity.  One 
learns  to  take  what  one  can  get  and  to  make  the  most  of 
one's  own  shutters. 

Of  course  the  brotherly  relation  is  extremely  delicate, 
unless  the  sister  is  wholly  plastic.  Sarah  is  in  no  sense 
plastic.  She  has  devised  a  theory  that  I  am  interested 
in  molding  her  opinions.  Even  if  she  were  plastic  this 
theory  would  make  trouble. 

And  so  I  watch  my  step  in  the  vicinity  of  her  reserve, 
paying  the  penalty  of  our  closeness. 

Moreover,  there  is  good  science  in  this  practice.  If 
she  said  nothing  about  Pine  it  was  probably  because  she 
didn't  know  what  she  thought  about  him.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  I  didn't  know  what  I  thought  about  him.  I  had 
a  feeling.  If  I  had  been  accosted  in  the  matter  I  might 
have  talked  myself  into  an  opinion.  Certainly  I  didn't 
have  one  ready.  .  .  . 

It  was  not  until  the  next  morning  when  we  were  with 
Rudley  on  the  train  to  Mineola,  and  when  I  had  begun 
to  have  unpleasant  thoughts  about  the  punch-bowl,  that 
she  came  to  Pine. 


124  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Last  night,"  I  heard  her  saying  to  Rudley,  "I  met 
a  poet  who  hates  inventions.  Isn't  that  odd?" 

"An  old  man,  then?" 

"Oh  no!     Quite  youngish.     About  twenty-eight." 

Rudley  grinned.  "Then  he  doesn't  use  a  penknife  to 
sharpen  his  quill — or  maybe  he  only  hates  new  inven 
tions.  There  are  lots  of  people  like  that.  Still  living  in 
caves." 

"Yes,  I  think  it  is  mostly  new  inventions.  He  thinks 
we're  all  getting  to  be  too  complicated." 

"Perhaps  he's  right.  Anyway,  no  one,  thank  Heaven, 
will  need  to  invent  another  engine!" 

Pine  was  dismissed  by  their  laugh. 

Rudley  and  Sarah  sat  before  me  on  the  subterranean 
train.  We  had  reached  the  hole  in  the  ground  through 
the  stately  temple,  and  were  whisked  under  a  city  and  a 
river,  across  bleak  suburbs  and  over  stretches  of  Long 
Island  strangely  patched  with  fragments  of  sliced-up 
farms  alternating  with  prophetic  thrustings  of  the  city. 

I'm  sure  I  shall  always  associate  Mineola  with  shivers 
and  a  looking-up  crick  in  the  neck;  with  dampish 
ground,  a  staring,  milky  blue  sky,  and  ap  opalescent  sun. 
A  keen,  cold  sweep  of  wind  said  plainly  enough  that  it 
was  not  technically  a  flying  day. 

Something  else  in  the  air,  a  tingle  of  far-sent  feeling 
as  to  the  great  game,  might  easily  have  seemed  to  affect 
every  figure  in  this  ultra-modern  stage-setting. 

There  was,  indeed,  no  outward  mark  of  excitement. 
The  mechanicians  might  even  have  produced  the  effect 
of  a  tranquil  preoccupation,  oiling,  tapping,  fingering 
bracing  cables  as  a  musician  might  the  string  of  a  'cello, 
testing  struts  or  fins  or  stabilizers  or  strangely  articulated 
ailerons.  Yet  a  tensity  as  definite  as  that  of  an  inter- 
plane  bracing  wire  came  to  me  in  the  deliberate  move 
ments  of  crews  and  pilots. 

A  fantastic  bit  of  action  was  the  bobbing  of  an  unsus 
pected  head  from  a  cockpit,  perhaps  to  be  followed  by 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  125 

another,  telling  of  huddled  conference  or  co-operation  in 
the  thorax  of  a  silent  machine. 

Rudley  and  the  young  lieutenant  he  seemed  to  know 
very  well  talked  of  propellers — why  they  were  of  wood, 
why  they  could  be  longer  in  the  blade  when  the  power 
was  greater,  and  why  you  must  never  by  any  chance 
be  absent-minded  when  you  are  near  one,  no  matter 
whether  it  is  the  stillest-looking  thing  in  sight. 

The  lieutenant  pointed  toward  a  machine  in  one  of 
the  hangars.  There  had  been  a  call,  a  head  appeared 
above  the  cockpit,  and  a  mighty  roar — the  newest  voice 
in  the  chorus  of  evolution — synchronized  with  the  sudden 
melting  of  the  blades  into  a  blurred  circle. 

"If  any  part  of  a  man  were  near  enough  . . ."  suggested 
Rudley. 

"...  clean  as  a  guillotine,"  said  the  lieutenant.  "Last 
week  a  man's  arm  ...  at  the  shoulder." 

The  look  in  Sarah's  face  put  an  end  to  that. 

We  grew  accustomed  to  these  practice  trills  of  the 
great  voice,  beginning  with  a  guttural  shudder  and 
ending  like  a  lion  heard  through  a  megaphone,  before 
seeing  one  of  the  dragons  start  over  the  field,  and  before 
experiencing  that  easing  of  the  sound  in  the  spaces  of 
the  sky. 

Surely  it  will  be  long  before  the  flight  of  an  airplane 
becomes  commonplace,  before  we  shall  take  quite  for 
granted  the  splendor  of  this  physical  fact.  That  rush 
across  the  level,  like  the  sprint  of  a  man  for  the  broad 
jump,  is  itself  something  to  make  the  breath  come 
quicker,  a  kind  of  frenzied  question  that  holds  like 
pressure  on  a  nerve  until  the  slanting  rise  relaxes  the 
tension. 

All  sorts  of  images  flare  in  one's  mind  as  the  thing  cuts 
into  the  sky.  At  the  start  the  silhouette  seemed  like  an 
arrow — more  like  an  arrow  than  like  a  bird — an  arrow 
strangely  barbed,  a  gigantic,  living  arrow,  growling 
raucously  on  its  way  to  some  far  objective. 


126  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

High  overhead  it  was  not  like  an  arrow.  It  was  a 
falcon  or  an  eagle  .  .  .  soaring  and  watching  as  in  some 
absorbed  pause. 

In  no  way  did  it  suggest  battle.  Yet  if  one  went  back 
to  the  falcon  or  the  eagle  the  quarry  thought  would  come 
at  last. 

What  would  a  bird  think  of  it? 

I  asked  the  lieutenant.  "They  don't  like  it,"  he 
said.  "Afraid.  Except  the  eagle.  He  doesn't  under 
stand  how  to  be  afraid.  He  is  known  to  have  attacked 
it.  A  surprise  for  him,  eh?" 

One  could  fancy  that,  certainly.  What  a  tremendous 
event  in  the  life  of  an  eagle — to  pounce  on  this  amazing, 
insolent  interloper  of  the  sky  .  .  .  and  find  all  that  he 
would  find! 

Imagine  the  eagle's  rival,  with  its  stiff  wings  and  awful 
voice,  growing  from  a  speck  to  a  monster  as  it  does  when 
it  leaps  at  you  in  that  tearing  return  across  the  field, 
halting  with  a  roar  but  a  few  yards  away ! 

The  big  moment  for  Sarah  was  when  Rudley  and  the 
lieutenant  helped  her  to  the  rim  of  a  cockpit  and  pointed 
out  the  altimeter,  the  compass,  pressure-gauges,  in 
clinometer,  oil-pulsators,  switches,  magnetos — yes,  and 
the  handy  fire-grenade.  I  fancy  that  it  may  have  seemed 
to  them  as  rather  decent  not  to  say  too  much  about  the 
full  meaning  of  that. 

As  for  Rudley,  he  had  his  big  moment  when  he  stood 
with  Sarah  in  the  actual  presence  of  a  "Curtis  twelve" 
engine  and  could  once  more  expound  his  engine  story. 
Deep  water  for  Sarah.  This  matter  of  "  understanding  " 
a  man  so  well  has  its  penalties.  Rudley's  elation  was 
transparently  complete.  He  was  aflame  with  en 
thusiasm.  The  glow  of  him  was  reflected  in  Sarah's 
face.  Any  man  would  have  liked  to  see  that. 

To  be  the  mirror  to  a  man's  great  wish — that  is  a 
potent  thing  in  a  woman.  I  suppose  it  explains  many  a 
mighty  piece  of  history.  I'm  not  thinking  merely  of  the 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  127 

Josephines  and  Lady  Hamiltons  and  George  Sands,  but 
of  the  women  close  beside  the  pioneers — beside  the  lone 
some  fighters  and  explorers  and  experimenters  and  artists 
of  the  world — well,  maybe  you  would  say  the  great 
gamblers.  .  .  . 

When  I  saw  Rudley,  one  hand  touching  Sarah's  arm 
while  he  pointed  at  the  humming  silhouette  against  the 
gray  sky,  I  wondered  again  whether  his  engine  dream 
wasn't  giving  him  the  gambler's  thrill  .  .  .  and  whether 
there  isn't  something  in  that  to  infect  the  imagination 
of  a  girl  like  Sarah — a  girl  with  imagination  enough  in 
the  first  place  to  grasp  an  image  and  get  its  bearings — 
whether  something  of  the  gambler's  thrill  would  not 
quite  naturally  begin  to  be  a  factor  with  her,  an  abso 
lutely  enveloping  factor,  perhaps,  and  one  that  would 
cast  upon  Rudley  the  glamour  of  the  most  stupendous 
adventure  ever  inspired  by  the  conquering  curiosity  of 
mankind. 

If  Rudley  had  been  a  trained  pilot,  and  had  been  privi 
leged  to  ask  her  to  fly  with  him,  she  would,  of  course, 
have  been  eager  to  go.  There  was  a  moment  when  I 
thought  the  lieutenant  meditated  an  invitation.  He 
looked  at  Sarah  with  a  frank  admiration.  But  it  was 
not  a  good  flying  day.  Though  I  had  keyed  myself  to 
such  an  incident,  I  was  glad  it  did  not  happen.  If  the 
chance  had  come  I  might  have  climbed  aboard  one  of 
the  things  myself  without  a  qualm.  I  suppose  only  a 
weakling  could  shrink  from  such  a  superlative  sensation. 
Despatching  Sarah  would  have  been  another  affair. 

We  had  luncheon  in  a  little  hotel  in  company  with 
the  lieutenant  and  his  sister.  It  was  soon  after  the 
sister  appeared  that  the  question  of  eating  came  to  be 
considered.  I  felt  cold,  and  was  glad  of  the  coffee. 

Miss  Gerridge  has  "been  up."  She  described  all  of 
her  sensations.  Miss  Gerridge  described  everything  she 
happened  to  think  of,  including  the  kind  of  cream  you 
should  put  on  your  nose  before  going  into  the  open  air. 


128  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Her  talk  was  incessant  and  penetrating.  Even  food  did 
not  interrupt  it.  Although  the  roar  of  an  engine  forces 
a  pilot  and  his  passenger  to  be  content  with  gestures, 
I'm  sure  that  Miss  Gerridge  talked  for  the  whole  of  her 
flight. 

She  talked  to  me  on  the  way  back  to  the  field — 
about  her  brother,  and  what  her  mother  said  when  he 
got  his  commission;  about  a  wonderful  colonel  she  met 
last  week,  and  the  funniest  thing  he  said  about  his  sister- 
in-law's  way  of  driving  a  car;  about  Noo  Yawk,  and 
George  Cohan,  and  sweaters,  and  appendicitis,  and  Red 
Cross  bridge,  and  Welsh  rabbit,  and  jazz  bands — she 
was  very  strong  on  jazz  bands.  I  asked  her  what  a 
jazz  band  was. 

"Oh!  Haven't  you  heard  one?"  she  exclaimed,  in 
eager  appreciation  of  my  ignorance.  "They're  just 
bands  with  funny  instruments — with  a  sort  of  queer, 
nice  sound  that  makes  you  laugh.  There's  a  funny 
sound  in  them  somewhere  like  when  you  have  a  piece 
of  paper  wrapped  over  a  comb — a  perfectly  lovely, 
wheezy  sound.  You  know  what  I  mean?" 

We  might  have  gone  farther  into  jazz  bands  if  there 
hadn't  been  a  spatter  of  rain,  which  naturally  turned 
Miss  Gerridge  to  atmospheric  topics.  .  .  . 

Because  we  waited  to  watch  the  finish  of  a  practice 
flight  we  were  in  a  somewhat  damp  condition  before  re 
turning  to  the  station.  My  impression  is  that  this  fact 
rather  confirmed  Sarah  in  a  feeling  that  she  had  had 
an  adventure. 

It  was  while  we  awaited  the  train  that  Rudley  re 
marked  to  Sarah,  with  a  gesture  toward  the  scene  we 
had  left: 

"This  would  be  very  anftoying  to  your  poet  friend." 

"And  yet  it  would  make  a  great  poem,"  said  Sarah. 

"A  poem?"  Rudley  evidently  hadn't  thought  of  it 
that  way.  "Perhaps."  He  was  in  a  mood,  I  am  sure, 
to  wish  to  see  the  poem  opportunity  if  Sarah  thought  it 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  129 

was  there.  (If  I  had  been  in  his  place  I  know  what  I 
should  have  said.  It  is  easy  to  think  of  wit  for  the 
other  man.  I'm  sure  I  should  never  say  the  right  thing 
to  a  girl  ...  at  the  right  time.) 

What  he  did  say  was,  "I  don't  quite  get  poems  and 
patents  in  the  same  class." 

If  we  hadn't  been  so  wet  there  might  have  been  an 
argument.  Moreover,  the  train  came.  Yet  I  saw  them 
across  a  rather  full  car  talking  animatedly  during  the  run 
back  to  the  city.  It  must  have  been  during  this  inter 
val  that  they  plotted  going  to  see  a  play  with  an  aviator 
in  it  My  aunt  was  asked  to  join  them.  I've  forgotten 
her  form  of  evasion. 

Rudley  has  a  way  of  carrying  off  things.  When  the 
invitation  came  to  me  to  "make  it  three"  I  was  obliged 
to  plead  an  engagement,  very  much  to  my  liking,  to 
join  a  circle  at  a  fraternity  club  in  the  Roaring  Forties. 

"It's  horribly  embarrassing,"  said  Rudley,  "the  way 
Sarah  Grayl  and  I  are  forced  to  wander  off  alone  to  a 
show.  Really,  I'm  quite  annoyed." 

"So  I  see,"  said  my  aunt. 


IX 

Looking  back  on  the  thing  that  has  happened,  I  can 
perceive  not  only  how  inevitable  it  was — inevitableness, 
after  the  event,  is  the  smoothest  of  conclusions — but  how 
the  contributory  elements  worked  together  with  a  kind 
of  malicious  nicety  to  give  the  thrust  a  sharpness. 

It  was  but  a  little  after  ten  o'clock  when  I  came 
back  from  the  club,  and  I  had  in  mind  to  take  a  quiet 
hour  for  the  Book.  The  way  in  which  street  noises 
diminish  in  number  and  volume  toward  midnight  is 
like  that  of  a  slowly  subsiding  ache,  and  though  this 
gives  to  those  that  remain  a  clearness  out  of  proportion 
to  their  actual  quality  as  noises,  one  gets  the  stilling 
effect  gratefully.  That  shuttle  of  sound  from  the 


130  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

elevated  road  in  the  middle  distance  weaves  itself  into 
a  pattern  as  dull  and  aloof  as  that  made  by  the  ticking 
of  a  clock.  The  brass  treble  of  the  trolley-bell  becomes 
a  mechanical  punctuation  point  in  the  gray  page  of  the 
night.  An  auto-horn  splashes  into  the  pianissimo  of 
the  orchestration  like  the  unctuous  yawp  of  an  old 
frog.  Some  one  up-stairs  drops  a  shoe  or  moves  a 
chair.  Alonzo  puts  an  unnecessary  snap  into  the  clos 
ing  of  his  elevator  cage.  A  man  in  dirty  white  produces 
a  rhythmic  muffled  screech  with  his  street  brush.  A 
cat  wails,  or  a  dog's  belated  outing  brings  an  experimental 
yelp  of  salute.  But  it  is  night.  And  windows  are  a  soft 
pedal.  There  would  be  a  difference  in  summer. 

It  chanced  that  I  found  Zorn  with  me  in  Alonzo's 
cage.  He  didn't  ask  me  to  visit  him.  He  has  his  own 
way  of  making  a  suggestion  of  that  sort.  This  time  it 
seemed  to  be  accomplished  by  his  beginning  to  talk  and 
unlocking  his  door  without  pausing.  To  get  the  end 
of  it  I  had  to  follow  him  in. 

Stokes,  with  his  hat  in  his  hand,  as  if  by  recent 
arrival,  came  to  the  door  of  the  passage  inquiringly. 

"I've  put  an  immediate  letter  on  your  table,  sir." 

"Stokes,"  said  Zorn,  with  a  savage  turn  of  the  head, 
"I  have  told  you  repeatedly  that  I  don't  want  you 
to  'sir'  me." 

"Yes,  sir." 

"That  term  belongs  to  a  flummery  that  is  obsolete 
and  repulsive.  It  gives  me  a  nausea.  You  understand 
that  I  don't  like  it,  don't  you?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Very  well,  then.  At  whatever  inconvenience,  at 
whatever  cost  to  your  personal  impulses  and  preferences, 
I  wish  you  would  make  an  effort  to  omit  the  word." 

"All  the  same,  Mr.  Zorn,  I  was  once  with  a  'igh-class 
Southern  family — it  was  in  Louisville,  Mr.  Zorn — and 
the  gentlemen  thereabouts  often  said  'sir'  to  one  an 
other." 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  131 

"It  was  their  privilege,"  snapped  Zorn.  "And  you 
will  permit  me,  Stokes,  to  remind  you  that  you  are  not 
a  Southern  gentleman." 

"Right-o,"  murmured  Stokes. 

After  turning  about,  the  man  once  more  faced  his 
critic. 

"I  think  I  am  going  to  Canada  to  enlist,  s — Mr. 
Zorn." 

Zorn  regarded  him  steadily  for  a  moment.  "To  en 
list?" 

Stokes  nodded  in  something  like  an  attitude  of  atten 
tion.  "I  met  an  old  pal  of  mine.  .  .  .  He's  going." 

Zorn  mutely  revolved  the  case  in  his  mind.  A 
whimsical  corollary  seemed  to  occur  to  him. 

"And  so  you  will  be  saying  'sir'  again  in  spite  of  me." 

Stokes  grasped  this  slowly  but  accurately. 

"Why,  I  fancy  that's  true,  sir!" 

There  was  another  pause  while  Stokes  waited  as  if 
to  be  assured  that  he  had  been  dismissed. 

"I  don't  know  what  sort  of  a  soldier  you  will  make," 
said  Zorn,  gruffly.  "  I  suppose  you  could  cook  for  them." 

Stokes's  eyebrows  twitched.  "I  can't  say.  A  chap 
can't  be  sure.  But  I  was  thinkin'  I  might  do  rather 
well  as  a  fightin'-man.  .  .  .  The  fact  is  I  had  a  bit  of  a 
scrap  to-night." 

"Fighting!" 

"And  put  my  man  down  rather  neat.  .  .  .  He  said  the 
English  were  a  lot  of  damned  pikers.  We  came  within 
twenty  yards  o*  bein'  pinched." 

"This  isn't  a  fist  war,"  grunted  Zorn.  "Better  mind 
your  game." 

"Good  night,  sir!" 

This  seemed  to  include  us  both. 

"Good  night!" 

Zorn  walked  very  slowly  toward  his  holy  of  holies. 

"The  red  hand  reaches  out,"  he  said,  in  a  voice  of 
muffled  hardness.  "Grabbing  where  it  can.  Beckon- 


132  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

ing  where  it  must  be  content  to  do  that.  .  .  .  Rudley  is 
getting  restless." 

"Rudley?" 

"  It's  not  enough  to  offer  his  engine.  ...  He's  sure  to 
offer  himself.  Though  lately  he  has  been  silent  about 
that." 

"He  hasn't  said  a  word  of  the  matter  to  me,"  I 
remarked,  by  way  of  leading  farther. 

"No?"  He  looked  at  me  as  if  considering  the  bearings 
of  this,  then  turned  with  a  wave  of  his  bony  hand. 
"I  try  to  keep  war  out  of  here." 

We  were  indeed  in  his  secret  haunt — the  little  room 
corresponding  to  my  own.  But  it  had  no  look  of  mine 
or  any  other.  At  a  first  glance  a  housekeeper  might  not 
feel  sure  that  he  had  kept  war  out  of  it.  If  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  a  precise  disorder  this  nest  was  an 
example.  You  might  guess  that  everything  in  the 
jumble  was  where  it  was  by  his  appointment.  Never 
theless,  the  effect  was  of  an  amazing  confusion  of  books, 
papers,  prints,  maps,  photographs,  cigar-boxes  with 
labels,  pasteboard  boxes  tied  with  strings,  heaps  of  en 
velops  tied  with  strings,  plaster  casts,  pipes,  and  dead 
clocks.  A  small  part  of  the  table  not  covered  by  pam 
phlets  and  litter  might  have  been  used  for  the  purposes 
of  a  writing-desk.  The  chair  in  front  of  this  had  two 
cushions  and  a  supplemental  wad  of  newspapers.  .  .  . 
Evidently  he  likes  to  perch  high,  or  else  he  has  neglected 
to  notice  that  the  swivel  would  elevate  it. 

As  he  sat  in  this  chair  (the  removal  of  an  atlas  gave 
me  a  seat  on  the  one  other  chair  near  by),  the  light 
shining  on  his  pink  bald  place,  he  looked  older  than 
when  I  saw  him  for  the  first  time. 

At  the  moment  I  thought  he  was  resolving  not  to  talk 
about  war. 

There  are  moments  when  Zorn  is  strangely  transparent 
— I  mean  that  you  can  see  what  is  coming,  or  that  he 
is  questioning  the  situation  before  questioning  his  lis- 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  133 

tener.  Thus  he  gave  me  a  knife-edge  glance  before 
asking: 

"Are  you  a  collector?" 

I  hardly  thought  I  was.  There  had  been  ferns  and 
minerals.  And  always  books. 

"Stamps?" 

"Not  since  I  was  a  boy." 

Afterward  it  was  easy  to  guess  that  this  innocent 
answer  gave  him  a  pang.  Actually  he  made  no  sign 
save  by  an  impressive  slowness  in  remarking,  "It  would 
be  a  good  thing  for  a  boy." 

I  thought  that  his  hand  left  a  library  rack  just  behind 
him  and  that  I  was  to  miss  some  interesting  revelation. 

"I  can  understand  ..."  I  began. 

"That  is  doubtful,"  he  jerked  out.  "If  you  could 
drop  it,  then  it  did  not  really  reach  you.  Human 
capacities  differ." 

"Do  you  mean  capacities  or  tastes?"  I  demanded, 
not  too  humbly,  it  may  be.  At  the  moment  it  was  not 
collections  I  wanted  to  get  at.  There  was  the  matter 
of  holding  him  more  in  the  region  of  Rudley. 

"I  mean  capacities,"  he  insisted.  "Just  that.  Tastes 
must  have  capacity  space  to  grow  in.  Very  likely  you 
think  you  know  something  about  a  thing  like  stamp 
study.  Yet  nothing  is  more  improbable  than  that  you 
do.  It  is  necessary  only  to  consider  what  you  are  not 
likely  to  know  to  appreciate  the  improbability  of  your 
understanding  the  profound  significance  of  a  study  like 
this.  You  are  a  professor  sort  of  person,  and  you  may 
know  the  difference  between  a  yen  and  a  sen.  You 
may  know  where  the  Straits  Settlements  are,  when  the 
Dutch  took  over  Curasao,  when  Italy  broke  into  the 
Levant  or  that  clever  old  shark  Diaz  absconded  from 
Mexico.  You  may  know  the  dialects  of  Obok,  the 
emblem  of  the  Orange  River  Colony,  the  revolutions  of 
Paraguay;  be  able  to  count  in  the  krans  of  Persia,  the 

atts  of  Siam,  or  the  avos  of  Timor.     You  may  know 
10 


134  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Charkhari,  and  Gwalior,  and  Hyderabad,  and  Jind,  and 
Keda,  and  Perak,  and  Sungei  Ujong.  You  may  know 
something  of  the  tragedies  of  Selangor,  or  Uganda,  or 
Tibet,  and  Cundinamarca,  and  a  thousand  other  super 
ficial  facts.  But  the  sheer  probability  of  your  knowing, 
without  the  study  of  stamps,  the  deep-lying  significance 
of  human  evolution,  the  intricate  wonders  of  race  strug 
gle,  the  spiritual  orientation  of  that  poor,  faltering,  but 
amazingly  tenacious  biped,  Man — this  probability,  I 
tell  you,  is  absolutely  negligible." 

He  was  looking  at  me  now  as  if  fastening  me  to  the 
back  of  my  chair,  and  this  thought  made  his  next  al 
lusion  seem  rather  funny. 

"There  are  people,  you  know,  who  would  rather  stifle 
a  beautiful,  harmless  butterfly  in  a  cyanide-jar,  jab  it 
through  the  thorax,  and  fasten  its  corpse,  with  meticulous 
care,  upon  an  exhibition  board.  This  is  but  a  refinement 
of  the  instinct  for  killing.  .  .  . 

"Speaking  of  killing,"  he  said,  in  a  changed  voice, 
as  if  checking  his  tirade,  "do  you  know  what  the  Jews 
have  been  doing?"  He  reached  for  a  black-covered 
book  on  the  table.  "They  have  been  translating  their 
Scriptures — in  general  terms,  our  Old  Testament — tell 
ing  in  English  what  the  Law  and  the  Prophets  and  the 
Writings  really  said  and  are  saying.  And  the  com 
mandment  is  not  'Thou  shalt  not  kill.'  Millions  of 
pacifists  and  conscientious  objectors  have  hugged  this 
venerable  phrase.  No,  the  real  adjuration  was  and  is, 
as  transcribed  by  the  scholars  who  are  dealing  with 
their  own  ancestral  writings,  'Thou  shalt  not  murder.' 
A  little  different,  you  see — with  a  thousand  tons  more 
emphasis.  No  lawgiver  could  have  said,  'Thou  shalt 
not  kill, '  to  peoples  directed  by  Almighty  God  to  right 
eous  slaughter.  'Thou  shalt  not  murder*  puts  a  pro 
found  point  into  the  admonition.  It  isn't  murder  to 
kill  a  murdering  Hun.  It  is  murder  to  kill  a  butter- 

fly.  •  •  •" 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  135 

He  burst  out  again:  "Of  course  you  can't  imagine  a 
God  saying,  'Thou  shait  not  kill,*  to  the  same  Moses  or 
the  same  Joshua  who  is  intrusted  with  wholesale  exter 
minations.  The  authority  for  the  divine  instruction 
to  kill  a  whole  tribe,  to  drive  out  a  whole  people  and 
divide  the  land,  to  kill  a  King  Og  of  Bashan  and  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  in  his  cities,  is  given  as  authority 
for  the  divine  instruction,  'Thou  shalt  not  kill.*  Yes, 
you'll  find  all  the  ruthlessness  you  want  in  your  Deuter 
onomy.  All  the  Kaiser  has  to  do  is  to  fancy  himself 
a  Moses  or  a  Joshua,  and  he  may  smite  his  breast  and 
cry,  'to  drive  out  nations  from  before  thee  greater  and 
mightier  than  thou  art,  to  bring  thee  in,  to  give  thee 
their  land  for  an  inheritance.'  .  .  . 

"No,  'Thou  shalt  not  murder'  is  better  ...  a  little 
more  consistent.  A  little  less  an  insult  to  Almighty 
God." 

A  pathetic  bitterness  had  come  into  his  voice. 

Then  of  a  sudden  his  eyes  caught  the  letter  Stokes 
had  placed  on  his  table. 

"  Pardon  me,"  he  said.  His  way  of  saying  this  sounded 
like  an  echo  of  something  he  had  been  rather  than  of 
anything  he  is.  There  was  an  almost  courtly  inflection 
tinged  by  an  apprehensive  eagerness.  My  impulse  was 
to  go  away,  but  it  occurred  to  me  that  this  might  seem 
to  accuse  his  digression.  I  waited. 

He  seized  the  purport  of  the  letter  in  a  sweeping  glance, 
laid  the  sheet  down,  and  thrust  a  hand  through  his  hair. 

"I  shall  be  going  away  for  a  few  days,"  he  said, 
simply. 

I  believe  he  went  away  that  night.  .  .  . 

This  was  on  Tuesday.  On  Thursday  Sarah  came 
home  from  one  of  her  successful  afternoons  in  a  highly 
effervescent  condition.  I  could  hear  her  singing  in  her 
room.  Aunt  Portia  Rowning  had  attached  her  to  an 
important  war  bazaar  committee;  she  had  looked  in 
upon  an  exhibition  of  rebellious  art  for  which  Pine  had 


136  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

sent  her  cards;  and  she  had  spent  an  hour  at  a  suffrage- 
committee  meeting.  In  the  evening  we  were  to  see  three 
playlets  at  one  of  the  pocket  theaters  in  Macdougal 
Street. 

Sarah  was  absurdly  merry  at  the  dinner.  My  aunt 
took  note  of  her  heightened  way.  I  am  not  likely  to  for 
get  that  whimsical  rosiness  of  Sarah — that  quaint  man 
nerism  of  her  lips  when  she  is  mischievous,  or  that  soft, 
teasing  look  of  her  eyes,  with  that  recurring  flash  like  a 
spark  in  a  pool. 

She  laughed  at  my  aunt's  admonition  about  coats; 
she  laughed  at  my  solicitude  about  my  tie;  she  laughing 
ly  led  the  way  when  it  was  our  time  to  start. 

"Three  plays,"  she  was  saying  as  she  snuggled  her 
chin  into  her  fur  collar  and  laid  her  hand  on  the  knob 
of  the  door.  "Three  plays!  I  wonder  will  they  .  .  ." 

At  the  pause  I  saw  that  she  was  peering  beyond  the 
partly  opened  door  .  .  .  peering  with  a  body  rigid  and 
utterly  still.  The  thing  was  not  to  be  explained  by 
anything  that  came  to  my  mind  while  I  waited.  Her 
intentness,  a  locking  of  every  volitional  muscle,  some 
how  was  communicated  instantly  in  her  outline.  If  she 
had  opened  the  door  to  find  lift  and  staircase  in  a  heap 
at  the  bottom  of  a  pit  she  would  have  started  back 
and  she  would  have  cried  out.  But  she  neither  moved 
nor  made  the  faintest  sound. 

I  had  opened  my  lips  to  speak  when  I  heard  the  clos 
ing  of  a  door. 

It  was  then  that  she  slowly  turned  about,  pushing 
the  knob  in  her  hand  until  the  click  came. 

"Laura — Laura  Sherrick.  .  .  ."  She  finished  with  a 
gesture,  an  inept  faltering  motion  with  her  finger. 

"Into  Rudley's  rooms?" 

She  nodded. 

I  have  always  been  sensitive  to  exaggerated  descrip 
tions  of  emotional  signs,  especially  to  notations  of 
pallor.  Yet  I  know  now  that  blood  may  leave  a  face 


THE  HIDDEN  RIVER  137 

until  but  a  shadow  remains.  Sarah  looked  at  me  with 
eyes  that  acted  as  if  a  physical  blow  had  fallen  squarely 
upon  them,  though  this  would  have  made  the  eyelids 
quiver,  whereas  she  simply  stared  .  .  .  stared.  Her  lips, 
parted  in  a  hard  line,  were  as  colorless  as  her  cheeks. 
And  there  she  stood,  stock  still  ...  as  still  as  I  was. 

"Damn  him!"  I  said. 

I  don't  know  which  of  us  made  the  first  movement. 

I  knew  that  my  aunt  remarked,  "What  did  you  for 
get?"  as  we  appeared  again  before  her. 

"Forget?"  I  laughed.  "Forget  is  very  good — espe 
cially  good.  You  couldn't  have  hit  it  better." 

"What  do  you  mean?"  demanded  my  aunt,  with  a  look 
at  Sarah.  "Why,  Sarah—!" 

"It  is  nothing  of  importance,"  I  said,  "except  that 
Laura  Sherrick  is  visiting  her  friend  Mr.  Rudley." 

The  next  question  of  my  aunt  was  entirely  character 
istic. 

"Are  you  quite  sure?" 

Sarah  laughed — the  most  unbeautiful  laugh  of  her 
career. 

"Oh  yes!    Quite  sure." 

We  went  over  it.  At  least  we  had  begun  to  do  so, 
each  of  us  in  his  or  her  own  way,  when  Sarah  was  up 
again. 

"Well,"  she  said,  hooking  the  fur  at  her  neck,  "we're 
off  for  the  three  plays." 

"Wait  a  moment — "  I  began. 

But  I  saw  that  we  were  to  go. 

Two  of  the  plays  were  very  solemn.  I  regretted  the 
proportion. 


PART    FOUR 

Changed  Horizons 


THAT  interval  in  the  old  valley  seems  to  have  been 
needed  for  the  perspective. 
At  first  the  picture  of  things  looked  freakish, 
twisted  ludicrously  .  .  .  especially  when  I  had  Sarah  in 
range. 

She  had  been  jolted  pretty  badly — that  is  beyond 
question.  The  door  she  had  opened  was  not  to  be 
closed  again  at  her  will.  No  Mrs.  Bluebeard  could  have 
had  more  of  a  shock.  To  estimate  the  shock  was 
to  guess  how  far  she  had  gone  with  Rudley.  I  couldn't 
look  at  her  bustling  off  to  Naugaway,  staring  through  the 
train  window  at  the  snow-splashed  Connecticut  land 
scapes,  holding  mother  at  arm's-length,  chirping  cleverly 
on  the  edges  of  the  home  nest,  jabbing  at  the  log  fire, 
slashing  at  the  piano  keys,  or,  as  she  silhouetted  in 
sweater  and  toque  against  the  white  and  gray  of  the 
valley,  without  seeing  again  that  frozen  moment  in  the 
passage,  without  feeling  again  the  extraordinary  reaction 
from  that  sudden  torpedoing  of  our  craft. 

Naturally  I  will  be  left  to  go  on  guessing  how  she  felt 
toward  Rudley,  how  much  of  meaning  there  was  in  that 
exaltation  of  every  trait  in  her  I  knew. 

There  is  a  Diana  side  to  Sarah,  very  proud  and  sure 
and  relentless — something  bigger  than  any  coquetry,  as 
much  above  coquetry  as  they  tell  us  courage  is  above 
mere  bravery.  And  there  is  a  Madonna  side,  too — you 
can  trace  it  in  her  way  of  looking  at  a  baby.  As  between 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  139 

a  dog  and  a  baby — anybody's  baby — you  wouldn't  be  in 
any  doubt  as  to  the  leap  of  Sarah's  interest.  This,  I 
take  it,  is  not  the  Diana  side  of  her  at  all.  Yet  both 
facets  are  there,  and  both  her  swinging  pride  and  her 
imaginative  tenderness  have  been  hit  hard. 

Perhaps  something  like  this  is  needed  to  change  a  girl 
into  a  woman.  The  kind  of  woman  will  depend  ...  on 
more  than  any  man  can  know. 

We  say  that  the  past  is  secure.  But  if  our  friends  hold 
keys  how  can  we  be  sure  that  the  past  will  not  be  ruled? 
Disenchantment  is  the  supreme  theft.  The  friend  who 
fails  absconds  with  our  dearest  funds. 

After  all,  it  is  possible  that  Laura  Sherrick  is  more  a 
grief  than  Rudley  is.  Rudley  may  be  charged  up  to  the 
sex  hazard.  Laura  Sherrick  was  playing  the  part  of  a 
friend.  She  knew  that  Rudley  had  seen  Sarah.  Allow 
ing  for  any  possible  reticence  on  Sarah's  part — and  in 
the  matter  of  reticence  she  is  no  subnormal  eccentric — 
it  is  inconceivable  that  Laura  did  not  know  or  suspect 
something  of  the  real  fact.  And  if  she  knew  something 
of  the  real  fact,  her  silence  was  a  wretchedly  unfriendly 
trick,  sinister  enough  in  itself.  As  for  all  that  lies  behind 
the  matter  of  her  visit  to  his  rooms  .  .  .  Well,  perhaps 
Sarah  and  I  are  both  stupidly  innocent  to  have  gone  into 
any  debate.  For  we  have  debated. 

"You  know,"  I  said,  "Laura  Sherrick  is  an  Individ 
ualist."  I  wanted  that  to  have  the  nastiest  possibili 
ties.  On  my  own  part  I  wanted  it  to  gather  up  all 
the  irony  communicated  by  her  dissertation  on  honesty. 
"It  was  an  Individualist's  deception." 

"I  can't  believe  she's  a  liar,"  came  from  under  the 
bruised  shell  of  Sarah. 

"Did  she  deny  knowing  him?" 

"There  never  was  occasion — not  exactly." 

"A  lie  isn't  merely  a  word,"  I  expostulated,  too  bitter 
to  wish  to  be  sententious.  "  She  was  acting  a  lie,  wasn't 
she?  Isn't  that  plain?  Acting  the  dirtiest  kind  of  a 


140  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

lie.  Like  an  Individualist.  Why  shouldn't  an  Individ 
ualist  lie  if  it  is  convenient?  A  lie  is  a  consideration 
belonging  to  a  notion  of  the  Fabric.  The  Individualist 
must,  I  suppose,  deny  the  Fabric.  It  is  part  of  the 
whole  horrible  anarchistic  idea  to  go  straight  after  what 
you  want.  And  devil  take  the  hindmost.  Just  as  you 
would  expect  from  a  person  with  the  brazen  nerve  to  sneak 
into  a  house  that  way  ...  a  cigarette-smoking  radical, 
smeared  with  the  muck  of  mental  libertinism,  a  dolled-up 
social  misfit  cursed  with  an  ingenious  tongue — and  eyes." 

Yes,  I  ranted  considerably.  But  I'm  through  with 
that.  It  isn't  much  consolation  that  I  wasn't  altogether 
fooled.  I'm  past  thinking  of  consolations.  It  is  done 
with.  Not  only  because  Sarah  said  she  didn't  want  to 
hear  any  more.  There  is  the  practical  need  to  get  rid 
of  the  dragging  memory. 

Sarah  began  this  getting  rid  of  memories  when  she 
wrote  that  curt  note  to  Rudley  the  day  we  went  away. 
I  say  curt,  because  she  volunteered  the  information  that 
she  had  been  veiy  brief.  They  were  to  have  gone  to 
the  War  Bazaar.  .  The  plan  to  go,  as  appeals  from  a 
fragmentary  confession,  had  for  an  incident  something 
like  a  quarrel.  I  may  yet  learn  just  what  this  was. 
It  had,  I  am  sure,  some  relation  to  a  discussion  of  chance 
— maybe  the  word  "lottery"  was  used.  At  all  events, 
Sarah  came  out  with  some  pungent  use  of  the  word 
"gambling."  Nothing  need  have  blazed  from  that  had 
not  Rudley  tossed  in  some  teasing  flippancy  about  New 
England.  They  would  have  been  wiser  to  have  kept  a 
good  length  away  from  that  antecedent  misunderstand 
ing.  Probably  neither  of  them  thought  of  going  back 
until  the  words  carried  them  there.  In  fact,  it  was 
simply  an  absurd  bit  of  sparring  with  a  sting  in  it  that 
would  mean  little  enough  in  itself  but  for  the  disaster 
of  our  discovery,  and  but  for  the  relation  established 
between  the  incident  of  their  talk  and  Sarah's  later  note. 

When  Sarah  insisted  on  starting  on  our  holiday  home- 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  141 

going  five  days  before  the  planned  time  I  knew  the 
reason.  So  did  my  aunt.  Flight  seemed  natural  enough. 
Without  knowing  about  the  War  Bazaar  affair,  it  was  in 
tolerable  enough  to  face  that  next  possible  meeting.  By 
now  I  could  have  met  Rudley  with  a  kind  of  levelness. 
But  for  a  time  after  that  night  it  would  have  been  diffi 
cult  to  fix  the  angle.  Sarah,  with  the  specific  appoint 
ment  in  mind,  saw  flight  as  a  simple  escape.  To  have 
gone  without  writing  the  note  would  have  told  him  some 
thing  she  chose  not  to  tell  him.  She  preferred  to  have 
him  think — he  couldn't  very  well  help  it — that  their  dis 
cussion  rankled.  Yet  her  expedient  was  no  triumph. 

"I  wish,"  she  said  to  me  at  the  icy  edge  of  our  little 
river,  "that  I  hadn't  let  him  think  I  was  infant  enough 
to  be  annoyed  by  a  fool  squabble." 

"  Either  that,"  said  I,  "  or  telling  him  the  truth.  Evi 
dently  you  didn't  want  to  tell  him  the  truth — that  you  had 
caught  him.  That  would  have  finished  off  everything." 

"It  was  like  spying,"  she  burst  out. 

Just  because  she  saw  it  through  her  own  partly  opened 
door  and  had  kept  quiet!  This  was  squirming  in  that 
complicated  head  of  hers.  It  didn't  alter  the  fact,  but 
it  gave  a  twist  to  her  view  of  the  case,  all  the  same. 
To  have  gone  away  without  explanation  would  have 
seemed  to  her  violent  enough  to  include  an  accusation 
of  what  she  knew — and  she  didn't  like  the  way  she  came 
to  know  it.  So  there  was  the  sort  of  note  that  left  him 
to  think  she  was  much  annoyed.  And  if  she  was  an 
noyed  it  must  be  the  tiff.  There  you  have  it.  And  a 
mess  of  feminine  subtleties  it  is. 

She  was,  I  hope,  a  little  simpler  in  putting  the  matter 
before  my  mother. 

II 

This  placing  of  the  matter  before  my  mother  occurred, 
I  suspect,  very  late  in  the  first  evening  of  our  return  to 
Naugaway. 


142  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

We  had  taken  the  afternoon  train  to  Brannington, 
had  waited,  as  usual,  for  the  rumble  of  the  iron  bridge, 
for  landmarks  like  the  marble-quarry,  the  tobacco-barns 
under  the  corner  of  Sage  Hill,  the  Haunted  House  with 
the  great  gate-posts,  and  had  swung  round  the  curve  to 
the  station  to  discover  old  Weyton  and  his  shabby  car, 
and  mother  bristling  on  the  platform  not  far  away. 

Mothers  look  good  to  perplexed  children,  even  when 
the  perplexed  children  are  somewhat  of  age.  I  suppose 
that  recent  association  with  my  fat  aunt  made  mother 
seem  thin.  In  fact,  she  is  not  thin.  Her  quick,  alert, 
appreciating  way  gives  her  a  wonderful  lightness  of  pres 
ence  that  often  carries  something  girlish  in  it.  In  my 
most  romantic  period  I  used  to  regard  her  intently  (gen 
erally  over  the  top  of  a  book)  and  fancy  how  she  might 
look  in  ermine  with  a  crown.  It  was  disconcerting  that 
the  crown  sometimes  fell  off  in  the  course  of  one  of  her 
plunging  activities.  Nevertheless,  I  liked  to  insist  with 
myself  that  there  was  an  essentially  queenly  cast  to  her 
head  and  shoulders — she  had  a  way  of  wearing  a  simple 
collar  thing  that  was  like  certain  pictures  of  Marie 
Antoinette.  When  I  had  successfully  imagined  her  as  a 
queen,  and  particularly  during  one  of  the  intervals  when 
the  crown  seemed  to  be  staying  on,  I  inevitably  became 
the  poor  crippled  prince  .  .  .  and  Sarah  was  the  rather 
trying  princess. 

Mother  was  always  a  great  deal  firmer  than  my  fa 
ther,  and  probably,  on  the  whole,  somewhat  juster.  My 
father  had  an  erratic  gentleness  that  did  not  make  for 
domestic  discipline.  Having  objectified  the  idea  of 
discipline  in  the  school,  he  could  carry  the  thing  through 
very  well.  But  domestically  he  was  like  a  minority 
stockholder.  He  had  the  rewards  of  his  gentleness.  I 
have  no  doubt  he  found  a  way  of  getting  along  without 
the  rewards  of  undisputed  authority. 

I  don't  mean  that  my  mother  domineered.  She  is  a 
Rowning,  and  no  Rowning  I  know  of  sets  out  to  win 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  143 

by  domineering.  But  she  has  a  way  of  making  her 
initiative  seem  inevitable.  Though  her  wishes  are  not 
always  eager  or  assertive,  they  are  definite.  She  always 
knows  what  she  wants  to  do  and  what  she  wants  others 
to  do.  This  is  not  so  remarkable  as  her  way  of  making 
you  glad  of  it. 

For  example,  we  naturally  sat  as  she  placed  us  in  the 
car — Sarah  on  her  left — without  sense  of  an  intruded 
wish.  Probably  her  gusto  has  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the 
results.  Despite  her  shrewdness,  and  something  whim 
sically  caustic  that  often  goes  in  her  judgments,  she  is 
essentially  an  appreciator.  You  would  gather  that  she 
always  had  been  lucky,  if  not  that  Providence,  repeatedly 
and  by  habit,  had  slipped  through  some  very  handsome 
juggling  in  her  interest.  I  remember  that  my  grand 
mother  was  credited  with  the  remark,  "I  believe  Cathe 
rine  could  be  happy  in  the  cellar  with  a  ton  of  coal.'* 

She  was  likely  to  make  a  point  of  having  very  simple 
tastes  because  my  father  liked  to  lumber  the  house  with 
souvenirs  and  "truck."  She  accused  him  of  never 
throwing  away  anything,  and  he  complained  that  he 
never  did  throw  away  anything  without  wanting  it 
badly  within  the  week.  She  insisted  steadfastly  that 
things  were  a  burden.  It  was  necessary  to  be  rather 
secretive  about  old  magazines  or  any  sort  of  collection. 

When  Aunt  Paul  asked  her,  on  a  certain  occasion, 
"What  do  you  want  for  your  birthday?"  her  answer  was 
characteristic: 

"Oh,  give  me  a  kiss  and  I  won't  have  to  dust  it." 

I  can  fancy  how  joyously  she  turned  over  to  the  re 
building  of  the  Academy  that  substantial  fund  from  her 
share  of  the  Rowning  inheritance.  I  think  she  must  have 
found  something  fascinating  in  the  fact  that  when  she 
married  my  father  he  had  nothing  in  the  world  but  a 
shelf  of  books.  She  would,  I  believe,  have  shied  at  a 
man  who  was  much  surrounded  with  anything — even 
with  money. 


144  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Isn't  it  wonderful  that  you  should  come  on  such  a 
day!"  she  cried,  as  Weyton,  with  the  effect  of  clucking 
to  an  old  horse,  let  the  chattering  car  have  its  head  on 
fhe  river  road. 

With  hands  outstretched  to  touch  both  of  us,  she  sat 
in  ecstatic  satisfaction  as  if  inhaling  the  sunset.  Her 
face  shone  through  the  frosty  twilight,  and  her  voice — 
well,  her  voice  tingled  with  mother.  There  are  no  words 
for  the  voice  of  a  mother — not  that  a  son  may  measure. 

It  was  she  and  her  kindling  emotion  rather  than  any 
enthusiasm  of  mine  that  glorified  the  valley,  filling  its 
shadowed  spaces  with  floods  of  violet  and  icy  glints  of 
turquoise  and  amber.  In  the  far  bowl  of  the  hills  the  sky 
glowed  like  champagne.  Everything  was  fantastically 
still.  The  wooded  stretches,  spotted  with  larch  and  fir 
and  balsam,  and  showing  here  and  there  the  stark  chest 
nuts  whose  death  by  blight  had  given  me  such  a  pang, 
were  spectrally  silent-looking  in  the  windless  cold. 

In  the  time  of  bare  branches  one  may  see  through  a 
notch  to  the  north,  midway  of  the  journey  from  Bran- 
nington,  a  large  white  house  backed  by  a  grove  of  hem 
locks — the  long-deserted  Rudley  place.  If  Sarah  gave 
to  this  a  glance  I  failed  to  catch  the  sign.  .  .  . 

Father  stood  in  the  doorway  as  we  came  up  the  path. 
He  had  been  detained  by  some  tangle  of  affairs  incidental 
to  the  despatch  of  home-going  boys,  and  his  look  was  a 
blend  of  preoccupation  and  fervent  welcome.  The  tall, 
lank  figure,  topped  by  the  shaggy  hair,  recalled  that 
thrill  of  awed  affection  which  recurrently  punctuated 
our  comrade  friendship.  He  has  a  long  stoop  to  kiss  me 
...  a  thing  that  more  than  once  has  been  contemplated 
with  curiosity,  most  frankly,  of  course,  by  boy  specta 
tors  of  such  an  incident.  Shall  we,  when  he  is  eighty 
and  I  am  fifty-six,  still  be  holding  to  the  symbolism? 
Doubtless  old  men  gradually  lose  a  sense  of  need  or 
beauty  in  such  signs.  Eye  and  voice  must  come  more 
and  more  to  satisfy  the  spirit,  to  express  sufficiently  the 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  145 

bonds  and  impulses  once  reflected  in  contact.  Yet  I 
should  hate  to  lose  something  close,  vital,  possessive, 
that  comes  in  the  ultimate  touch. 

Ah  yes!  Before  that  log  fire  there  was  once  again  a 
warm  world! 

The  faces  that  turned  to  the  flame  (there  had  been, 
naturally,  a  vociferous  dinner)  were  wonderfully  kindled, 
yet  at  the  same  time  seemed  withdrawn  as  by  the  so 
lemnity  of  significant  reunion. 

With  his  long  legs  stretched  toward  the  grate  and  his 
fingers  laced  above  his  watch-cord,  father  reminded  me 
anew  of  my  ancient  belief  in  something  Emersonian 
about  his  make-up.  That  one  cigar  allotted  to  the 
evening  may  not  have  been  Emersonian,  but  his  sil 
houette  surely  bore  the  resemblance,  though  I  fancy  he 
is  even  taller  than  the  Concord  philosopher  was — taller 
and  with  bolder  bones.  I  used  to  measure  him  among 
picturesque  men  and  find  him  satisfactory.  I  have  a 
vague  memory  of  him  standing  beside  Beecher  over  at 
Litchfield;  and  of  John  Fiske,  and  Doctor  Hale,  and 
Edward  Eggleston,  and  Mark  Twain  (who  spoke  at  the 
school  and  took  me  on  his  back  to  help  raid  an  apple- 
tree). 

Mother's  look  said  plainly,  "I  have  them  all  with 
me!"  She  was  building  pictures  in  the  blazing  hickory. 

Sarah  sat  with  her  chin  in  her  hand. 

The  shadow  of  a  kind  of  sadness  flickers  over  every 
reunion.  When  reminiscence,  and  curiosity,  and  reap 
praisal,  and  deferred  adjustment  all  have  had  expression, 
and  even  when  no  common  consciousness  of  an  inter 
vening  loss  or  discord  lays  hand  on  the  group,  there 
creeps  in  a  pathos  that  belongs,  I  suppose,  to  the  ebb 
and  flow  of  the  emotions,  that  does  not  accord  with 
tears  nor  with  laughter — a  sweet,  perhaps  a  holy  kind 
of  sadness,  yet  a  sadness  suffusing  the  mind  as  poig 
nantly  as  a  twinge  of  the  senses.  .  .  . 

Coming  back  out  of  the  crowd,  I  saw  my  father  not 


146  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

diminished — perhaps  rather  as  heightened — but  with  a 
sense,  not  easily  to  be  explained,  of  a  futility  in  many 
aspirations,  of  something  inconsequential  in  certain 
things  that  always  had  stood  up  as  of  indisputable 
importance.  I  saw  in  him  more  of  the  grind  and  less 
of  the  glory,  more  of  the  bruise  of  work  with  less  of  as 
surance  as  to  what  it  would  mean  to  him  to  have  done 
it.  I  saw  that  I  myself  was  sure  to  realize  with  an 
increasing  intensity  of  conviction,  with  a  steadily  deep 
ening  passion  of  pride,  the  nobility  of  his  character  and 
his  purposes,  and  I  saw,  too,  or  had  begun  to  feel,  not 
merely  that  disparity  between  labor  and  reward — this 
would  concern  him  not  at  all — but  that  more  appalling 
disparity  between  anything  that  may  be  done  and  the 
awful  weight  of  the  indifference,  inertia,  perversity, 
stupidity,  and  greed,  and  all  that  never  can  be  done,  on 
the  other  side. 

I  saw  my  mother,  still  with  the  queenly  head  of  my 
boy  dream,  but  dimmer  in  her  quiet  moments,  not  above 
suspicion  of  pains  that  catch  her  up  when  she  is  most 
eager  for  the  strength  of  a  wild  creature,  with  some 
thing  more  brittle  in  her  energy,  something  softer  in 
her  eyes. 

I  saw  Sarah  through  the  lens  of  a  Fact.  I  saw  her 
transmuted  into  a  woman.  .  .  .  Still,  Sarah,  with  that 
leaping  flame  of  fancy  and  adventurousness  that  seemed 
to  make  her  sister  to  the  fire,  but  for  the  first  time  a 
halted  if  not  a  daunted  Sarah.  I  saw  her  recasting  her 
world.  Any  woman  must  do  that,  perhaps  again  and 
again.  Quite  naturally  it  would  be  in  the  heart  of  such 
a  group  that  she  would  readjust  her  outlook.  She  might 
agree  with  herself  that  we  make  our  own  tragedies,  that 
this  or  that  does  not  greatly  matter,  and  so  on  to  the 
end  of  the  catechism  of  soul  anesthesia.  But  all  the 
same  I  knew  that  she  saw  her  path  uptorn  and  was  still 
quivering  from  shell  shock. 

I  saw  myself,  warmed  and  comforted — huddled  a  bit 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  147 

in  the  process — and  feeling  at  the  same  time  a  hovering 
doubt,  the  shadow  of  a  shadow,  out  of  which  came  ugly 
whispered  questions  as  to  The  Great  Desire — that  worth- 
whileness  query  that  is,  I  suppose,  the  subtlest  chain 
ever  fastened  upon  the  striding  Wish.  I  saw  something 
flamboyant,  quixotic,  ludicrous  in  the  spectacle  of  a 
puny  scribbler  scurrying  off  to  a  city  to  write  a  book 
.  .  .  with  so  much  piercingly  imperative  work  to  be  done 
for  the  earth's  people  .  .  .  with  desires  crying  not  for 
analysis,  but  for  response;  with  the  blood  and  brain  of 
the  races  urged  to  frenzied  effort:  with  simple  hungers 
— wholly  explicable,  wholly  elemental  stare-you-in-the- 
face  hungers — sobbing  their  inarticulate  want  on  the 
shoulder  of  the  world. 

Then  came  the  revulsion  .  .  .  and  the  sharp  thud  of 
the  door-knocker. 

Father  had  spoken  out  of  the  silence — 

"And  about  the  Book  .  .  .?" 

In  the  instant  of  his  question,  I  don't  know  by  what 
fantastic  reaction  I  suddenly  saw  again  the  clear  way — 
the  clear  need.  I  heard,  as  of  a  voice  not  my  own,  the 
rebuff  to  my  doubt.  Perhaps  it  was  merely  my  father's 
question  and  something  sent  out  by  that  question — some 
quality  of  echo  from  all  that  I  had  said  to  him  in  my 
passionate  struggle  to  see  and  to  solve,  with  something 
of  his  expectant  curiosity  or  concern — that  set  into  a 
blaze  the  hope  that  smoldered.  By  whatever  trick  of 
the  currents,  I  saw  in  a  glowing  certainty  that  the  very 
complexity  of  my  doubts  presented  an  imperative — 
that  the  discoverer  of  the  Great  Wish  would  have 
lighted  the  Great  Path. 

"It  is  begun.     I've  made  a  heap  of  notes." 

This  was  what  I  contrived  to  say,  and  the  saying 
sounded  rather  flat.  To  fling  yourself  into  the  vortex 
of  life  (this  was  the  way  I  used  to  fancy  it)  and  to  emerge 
after  so  little  flinging,  with  so  shadowy  a  sense  of  vortex, 
and  to  submit  as  the  fruit  of  your  puttering  a  banal 


148  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

report  of  progress  and  announcement  of  "a  heap  of 
notes,"  was  grotesque  to  the  grinning-point.  Yet  I  knew 
that  the  way  stretched  onward — I  was  forward  in  the 
chair  ...  on  my  feet  at  last,  for  Heaven  knows  what 
reason,  as  if  to  make  a  speech  about  it,  though  I  hadn't 
a  word. 

I  stood  there,  amazed  at  the  rush  of  the  thing  that  had 
happened  in  my  brain,  interrogating  the  backlog,  when 
the  knocker  sounded. 

It  was  not  long  after  nine  o'clock,  but  that  is  well 
past  any  visiting-hour  at  Naugaway.  It  was  also  past 
the  time  when  old  Bertha  locked  the  back  doors  and 
shuffled,  quietly  and  with  a  precise  deliberation,  up  the 
back  stairs  to  her  bedroom. 

Because  I  happened  to  be  on  my  feet  in  that  absurd 
way,  it  was  I  who  went  to  the  door. 

The  night  was  clear,  without  a  moon,  and  there  was 
a  moment  in  which  I  made  out  simply  a  human  bundle, 
a  man,  the  vapor  of  whose  breath  emerged  over  the  edge 
of  a  muffler. 

I  swung  the  door  wide  to  get  the  full  light  of  the  hall 
upon  the  figure. 

"Grayl  himself!"  said  a  voice. 

Then  I  saw  that  it  was  Zorn,  still  standing  quite  still 
as  if  only  to  be  moved  by  a  specific  summons  to  enter. 


ni 

Although  it  could  hardly  be  said  that  this  was  a  happy 
hour  for  such  a  matter,  I  found  myself  instantly  glad  to 
see  Zorn  and  to  be  able  to  make  him  known  to  my  peo 
ple.  Any  other  visitor  might  have  explained,  or  have 
started  to  explain,  in  the  first  breath  the  reason  for  so 
bewildering  an  anomaly.  He  did  indeed  indicate  at 
once  that  he  supposed  I  was  still  in  New  York.  This 
served  to  make  his  coming  the  more  inexplicable. 

He  submitted  to  the  removal  of  the  muffler,  but  re- 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  149 

fused  to  part  with  the  overcoat.  He  would  be  going  in 
a  moment,  he  said. 

By  the  intricate  process  of  translation  which  it  is 
necessary  to  practise  with  Zorn  it  began  to  appear  that 
he  had  called  to  see  my  father. 

He  looked  intently  at  my  mother  in  the  greeting,  gave 
Sarah  his  equivalent  for  a  smile.  My  father  he  regarded 
absently,  as  if  thinking  about  him  rather  than  looking 
at  him. 

"I  had  certain  business  near  here,"  he  said,  when  we 
had  him  seated  in  the  circle.  "I  remembered  the  place 
of  the  Academy  and  found  that  it  was  not  far  away." 

"I'm  glad  you  came,"  said  my  father,  cordially.  I 
could  see  by  his  glance  that  he  was  gathering  up  all  that 
I  had  told  him  about  Zorn. 

"Some  of  your  roads  are  very  bad,"  Zorn  added. 

We  echoed  agreement. 

"Very  bad,"  he  repeated.  "Did  it  ever  occur  to  you 
that  a  good  horse  is  better  than  a  bad  machine?" 

"Frequently,"  laughed  my  father,  "when  I  was  in  the 
bad  machine." 

Zorn  nodded.  "I  wouldn't  let  him  come  up  this  last 
bit  of  hill.  The  thing  seemed  to  be  strangling.  He's 
down  at  a  village  store — the  store  of  a  man  who  wanted 
to  close  up  and  I  wouldn't  let  him." 

I  could  imagine  Barker's  feelings. 

Zorn  then  said,  abruptly,  "I  wanted  to  ask  you, 
Doctor  Grayl,  if  you  ever  heard  of  a  man  named  Wain- 
crove." 

"Waincrove?"  My  father  pondered  for  a  moment. 
"I  don't  seem  to  recall  .  .  ." 

"He  was  in  the  Legislature  for  a  time — owned  con 
siderable  property — grew  a  good  deal  of  tobacco." 

"Ah  yes!"  Mv  father  remembered  Waincrove  now. 
"He  had  a  boy  .  .  ." 

Zorn  did  not  seem  to  be  interested  in  the  boy,  "Did 
you  know  a  chap  named  Hannigan?" 

11 


150  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

We  all  remembered  Hannigan.  He  had  been  in  the 
school,  too. 

"What  sort  of  boy  was  he?"  demanded  Zorn. 

"He  became  a  prize-fighter,"  returned  my  father,  with 
a  whimsical  grin. 

"But — "  Zorn  showed  signs  of  regarding  the  answer 
as  an  evasion. 

"I  always  found  him  a  decent  boy — he  had  a  good 
father  and  rather  a  remarkable  grandfather,"  added  my 
mystified  parent. 

"That  is  always  significant,"  observed  Zorn,  thought 
fully.  Presently  he  added,  "There  is  another  point — 
do  you  remember  that  this  Waincrove  had  a  daughter?" 

"My  recollection  is  rather  confused,"  confessed  my 
father,  "and  yet  .  .  ."  He  sat  up  in  his  chair,  with  the 
last  of  his  allotted  cigar  between  the  fingers  of  an  ex 
tended  hand.  "Yes,  I  remember  that  there  was  a 
daughter." 

Zorn  turned  to  him.  "Did  you  ever  hear  what  be 
came  of  the  daughter?" 

My  father  seemed  to  be  hesitating  for  an  instant,  or 
to  be  searching  his  recollection,  and  my  mother  made  a 
sound  as  it'  about  to  speak. 

"The  girl  .  .  .?  It  seems  to  me  that  she  went  away 
with  Wendell  Rudley's  daughter." 

It  suddenly  became  plain  that  Zorn  had  learned  some 
thing  that  he  wanted  to  know,  or  of  which  he  wanted 
to  be  convinced.  At  all  events,  he  made  a  gesture  as  if 
to  get  out  of  his  chair,  his  eyes  turning  for  a  moment  to 
the  fire.  Instead  of  rising  it  occurred  to  him  to  remark : 

"Perhaps  what  I  have  said  may  have  seemed  rather 
inquisitorial.  But  I'm  not  looking  for  gossip.  I  hope 
you  will  believe  that  I  have  a  proper  purpose." 

"I'm  sure  of  it,"  said  my  father. 

Zorn's  lips  twisted  in  that  queer  smile  of  his.  "One 
may  undertake  to  be  useful  and  yet  be  very  foolish. 
Have  you  discovered  that?" 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  151 

He  turned  about  to  my  mother. 

"You  should  be  proud  to  have  a  good  son — and  a  good 
daughter." 

"I  am,"  said  my  mother. 

"Hold  fast  to  them— without  hooks." 

"I  want  them  to  hold  fast  to  me,"  added  my 
mother. 

"Splendid!"  cried  Zorn,  slapping  the  arm  of  his  chair. 
"Splendid!  And  you  won't  accomplish  that  by  making 
them  feel  a  debt  to  you.  It  never  can  be  done  in  that 
way.  You  accomplish  it  by  feeling  a  debt  to  them. 
What  a  cheap  notion  the  world  has  of  bonds!  A  father 
who,  for  any  offense  conceivable  or  inconceivable,  says, 
*  Never  darken  my  door  again!'  is  a  travesty  of  father 
hood — a  hideous  caricature  of  a  man." 

This  was  quite  in  the  Zorn  manner.  I  recognized 
the  manner  without  being  able  to  surmise  the  special 
occasion,  unless  it  was  simply  the  sight  of  a  happy  family 
group.  Yet  a  happy  family  group  need  not  have  oc 
casioned  a  fiery  outburst  on  the  subject  of  parental 
perversity.  That  the  remark  bore  some  relation  to  the 
man  Waincrove  was  the  only  possible  suggestion  that 
came  to  me  by  way  of  afterthought.  By  the  same  road 
of  afterthought  I  concluded  that  something  vital  to  the 
information  he  was  after  lay  in  my  father's  recollection 
that  the  Waincrove  girl  had  gone  away  with  Wendell 
Rudley's  daughter.  I  had  not  remembered,  if  I  ever 
knew,  that  Wendell  Rudley  had  a  daughter. 

No  one  but  Zorn,  I  was  sure,  could  have  put  my 
father  through  this  brief  third  degree  without  himself 
seeming  more  grotesque  than  Zorn  had  seemed  while 
he  did  it.  If  some  headquarters  man  with  a  queer  eye 
and  a  scar  on  his  upper  lip  had  opened  his  bag  of  tricks 
in  front  of  our  fireplace  we  could  have  had  no  better 
excuse  for  astonishment.  Yet  Zorn,  with  far  less  of 
ingenuity  than  any  detective  would  have  felt  called  upon 
to  use,  in  fact,  with  no  ingenuity  at  all,  had  managed 


152  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

to  arouse  only  an  intense  curiosity,  not  so  much  as  to 
the  Waincrove  matter  as  to  himself. 

And  only  Zorn  could  have  created  a  situation  in  which 
no  one  asked  him  a  question.  Perhaps  his  "  I  hope  you 
will  believe  that  I  have  a  proper  purpose"  had  some 
thing  to  do  with  this.  At  all  events,  we  sat  and  watched 
and  listened. 

While  I  watched  I  saw  Zorn's  eyes  draw  intently  to 
Sarah,  who  met  the  look  frankly.  There  was  a  little 
movement  of  her  lips  as  she  waited. 

"You  are  coming  back  to  New  York?"  he  asked. 

"Yes."  She  spoke  quickly,  as  if  replying  to  the 
echo  of  a  challenge  earlier  than  this — perhaps  to  her 
own. 

"Good!" 

Zorn  stood  up,  then  turned  to  me. 

"And  the  man  who  is  writing  a  book — is  he  coming, 
too?" 

"Assuredly,"  I  said.     "We  shall  see  you  next  year." 

"Next  year?  Do  you  know,  a  little  astrologer  chap 
has  been  telling  me  that  nineteen  hundred  and  seventeen 
will  be  a  wonderful  year.  I  suppose  it  is  that  infantile 
notion  of  the  wonderful  year  that  keeps  us  going.  Prob 
ably  we  are  fooling  ourselves  in  the  same  way  about  the 
years  Beyond." 

"I'm  glad  we  can,"  declared  my  mother.  "And  I 
don't  think  it's  an  infantile  notion." 

Zorn  assured  himself  that  she  was  smiling. 

"I  mean,"  he  said,  wavering  in  a  movement  toward 
departure — "I  mean  that  we've  certainly  got  to  fight 
it  out  on  the  Other  Side  as  well  as  on  this." 

"Why  not?"  my  mother  demanded,  "if  you  mean 
work  it  out." 

"You  are  quite  right."  Zorn  extended  his  hand 
gravely.  "I'm  talking  like  an  irritable  old  man  who 
shouldn't  be  permitted  to  profane  with  peevish  thoughts 
a  household  like  yours.  That  is  true,"  he  went  on  as 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  153 

he  took  my  father's  hand.  "There  is  peace  here.  Good 
night!" 

My  father  and  I  followed  him  to  the  door.  I  went  as 
far  as  the  gate  to  see  him  rightly  started  down  the  road 
toward  the  village.  He  walked  squarely  in  the  middle 
of  the  way,  his  head  down,  one  hand  holding  the  muffler. 

It  was  not  until  I  lost  his  figure  at  the  turn  of  the  road 
and  had  scurried  with  a  shiver  back  into  the  house  that 
I  fully  grasped  the  amazing  oddity  of  the  incident;  the 
oddity  of  this  last  bit  of  the  journey  on  foot,  of  my  not 
knowing  where  he  came  from  out  of  that  cold  dark 
ness,  or  where  he  would  spend  the  night.  For  a  mo 
ment  I  felt  like  running  after  him  with  an  absolutely 
peremptory  expostulation. 

"What  a  strange  man!"  exclaimed  my  mother. 

This  was  the  inevitable  view  of  him. 

"It  scarcely  seemed  hospitable  to  let  him  go,"  my 
father  remarked,  with  a  puzzled  contrition.  "Should 
we  have  urged  him  to  stay?" 

I  tried  to  convince  them  that  Zorn  was  not  to  be  con 
trolled,  or  gave  that  effect,  which  amounts  to  the  same 
thing.  After  saying  that  he  was  going  in  a  moment,  he 
might  prolong  the  moment,  but  he  would  not  change 
his  plan.  Whatever  he  was  doing  he  would  do  in  his 
plunging  way  to  the  end.  They  might  be  sure  of  that. 

"What  do  you  suppose  he  is  doing?"  my  mother 
demanded. 

"If  I  made  a  guess,"  I  said,  "it  would  be  that  he  is  in 
the  throes  of  some  feverish  benevolence  with  a  New 
York  end  to  it."  I  recalled  the  matter  of  a  letter  that 
occasioned  his  statement  that  he  was  going  away  for 
a  few  days. 

We  talked  about  Zorn  for  a  long  time — Zorn  rather 
than  the  shadowy  affair  to  which  he  alluded.  I  have 
thought  that  there  was  a  characteristic  reticence  in  our 
common  avoidance  of  the  hidden  feature — the  thing 
Zorn  had  chosen  to  leave  unnamed;  not  so  much,  of 


154  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

course,  because  he  hadn't  disclosed  it  or  because  it  be 
longed  with  gossip  if  not  with  scandal — at  all  events, 
with  things  that  were  not  our  business.  How  Zorn's  at 
tention  came  to  be  reached  was  a  matter  too  obviously 
strange  for  admission.  So  we  reverted  to  Zorn  himself. 
As  a  hearthside  subject  he  was  obscure  enough  to  be 
inexhaustible.  ...  I  winced  at  the  recollection  of  his 
figure  melting  into  the  dark. 

It  was  freshly  disconcerting  to  feel  so  ignorant  as  to 
Zorn.  I  wondered  whether  that  ignorance  was  due  to 
his  peculiarities  or  to  mine — whether  I  was,  indeed,  as 
I  have  often  suspected,  constitutionally  incapable  of 
penetration  in  the  matter  of  character.  Possibly  we  all 
have  these  hopeless  moments  in  which  the  world  seems 
to  be  a  reiteration  of  shells,  of  mere  appearances — sounds, 
gestures,  clothes,  or  what  not — concealing  realities,  mo 
tive  elements,  potentialities  of  which  we  know  nothing 
at  all.  In  such  moments  I  often  wonder  whether  life 
isn't  largely  made  up  of  devices  for  obscuring  the  very 
essence  of  life,  whether  in  a  large  way  we  are  so  very 
different  from  a  peering,  •  muttering  group  at  a  mas 
querade,  absurdly  hiding  our  own  identity  while  in 
terrogating  the  identity  of  others,  fatuously  delighted  to 
discover  without  being  discovered.  .  .  . 

Meanwhile,  there  was  Sarah,  slanting  into  our  dis 
cussion  at  times,  and  returning  to  the  backlog  with 
that  new  look  from  under  the  long  lashes. 

She  was  for  being  impatient  about  Zorn  without  tell 
ing  us  very  clearly  why  she  felt  as  she  did.  And  she  was 
not  disposed  to  have  the  discussion  include  Rudley  just 
then.  Rudley  was  named.  This  was  inevitable.  But 
he  escaped  review  in  those  first  hours  because  Sarah 
managed  to  avoid  the  precipitating  step — and  because 
I  secretly  connived. 

In  view  of  the  certainty  that  Rudley  was  in  every  mind 
the  evasion  became  rather  pointed,  which  could  not  be 
what  Sarah  wished.  It  was  not  what  I  wished.  This 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  155 

was  not  the  time  for  debating  anything  so  complicated, 
and  I  had  no  desire  to  see  Sarah  wince  under  concerted 
observation — still  less  desire  to  hear  her  quibble  or  be 
come  bitterly  flippant,  as  she  well  might  when  lovingly 
driven  into  a  corner. 

Yet  in  the  deepest  sense  we  four  were  the  parties  in 
interest  and  it  seemed  rather  pathetic  not  to  have  the 
thing  done  with.  There  was  something  epochal  in  our 
evasion.  The  hand  of  the  outlander  had  at  last  reached 
into  the  realm  of  the  family.  Father,  mother,  son, 
daughter — and  then  that  primal  encroachment  that 
touches  the  daughter  heart.  All  very  simple.  As  trite 
as  Testaments.  One  thought  of  all  the  times  when  such 
a  matter  had  seemed  to  occasion  a  ludicrous  fuss,  when 
people  acted  as  if  they  were  the  objects  of  a  new  kind  of 
cataclysm,  when  fathers*  frowns  seemed  grotesquely 
brutal,  and  brothers  made  selfish  asses  of  themselves. 
Yet  what  an  amazing  amount  of  history  eddies  around 
this  elemental  commonplace!  As  for  poor  Romance, 
it  would  go  broke  without  it.  And  we  sat  there  as 
humanly  as  the  rest  of  them.  And  I'm  writing  down 
the  commonplace  with  a  throb  of  awe  because  I  know, 
nevertheless,  that  I  have  heard  the  dominant  note  of 
the  eternal.  .  .  . 

"I'm  tired!" 

Sarah  was  standing  with  the  firelight  rimming  her 
straight  figure. 

My  mother  was  up  in  a  moment.     "So  am  I." 

Sarah  crossed  over  to  my  father's  place  and  kissed 
the  gray  tangle  of  his  hair. 

"Good  night,  daddy!" 

"Good  night,  my  dear!" 

We  all  stood  in  a  group  at  last,  with  our  arms  fantasti 
cally  interlaced,  drawing  all  the  heads  as  near  together 
as  might  be  with  due  allowance  for  the  submergence  of 
mine.  It  was  one  of  our  old  tricks — a  kind  of  love-knot 
accomplished  with  eight  arms. 


156  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"You  see  we  are  bound  to  get  together  again!"  cried 
my  mother. 

4 'And  we're  such  a  superior  family!"  grunted  my 
father  in  the  pressure. 

Mother  and  Sarah  went  up-stahs  together. 

Father  and  I  sat  before  the  fire  for  a  time,  talking  of 
the  Academy.  .  .  .  Up  there  in  Sarah's  room,  unless  all 
rules  were  revoked,  my  mother  was  getting  the  story 
she  had  waited  for  ...  without  suspecting  the  sort  of 
story  it  would  turn  out  to  be. 

Even  if  signs  had  failed  the  story  would  have  been 
precipitated  by  that  letter  coming  two  days  later. 

Sarah  did  an  unusual  thing.  She  laid  the  letter  before 
me,  without  a  word. 

It  was  from  Rudley  on  the  eve  of  sailing  for  France. 

An  all  of  a  sudden  matter  [he  said]  as  to  the  time  of  sailing. 
I  can't  be  sure  the  craft  will  really  get  off  in  the  morning.  But 
we  go  aboard  to-night — me  and  the  engine!  Of  course  they 
had  to  satisfy  themselves  that  my  little  machine-crate  didn't 
hold  a  bomb — and  maybe  I  pulled  a  few  wires  to  get  the  thing 
into  my  state-room.  Anyway,  there  it  is,  just  for  company. 

You  see  I  couldn't  wait  any  longer.  Not  even  to  give  the 
United  States  the  glory  of  that  great  invention!  The  oppor 
tunity  seemed  to  bob  up.  I  want  to  see  the  best  they  have  on 
the  other  side.  And  I  want  to  get  into  the  great  game  in  the 
quickest  way  a  man  can  get  into  it.  The  sky  fight  is  the  big 
gest  chance  of  all. 

Gambler! 

I  wish  I  might  have  seen  you  again.  I'm  afraid  something 
went  wrong.  I  should  like  to  have  found  out  whether  you 
cared  to  know  that  I  was  sorry  for  anything  I  had  to  do  with  its 
going  wrong — for  any  fool  thing  I  had  said.  Probably  I'm 
flattering  myself.  Only  you  were  very  brief.  People  are  not 
usually  so  brief  as  that  unless — anyway  I  am  sorry.  It  would 
have  been  rather  nice  to  have  had  you  look  at  the  engine  in 
its  traveling-clothes  the  way  you  looked  at  it  that  night  (I 
mean  before  it  bit  you !)  and  maybe  to  have  had  you  wish  me 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  157 

luck,  or  something  like  that.  As  it  is,  unless  Zorn  comes 
home  within  an  hour  I  shall  have  to  endure  the  rather  pathetic 
sensation  of  wishing  myself  luck.  It  can  be  done.  There  may 
be  something  rather  thrilling  about  it.  No  tears  or  anything. 
The  fact  is  that  I  haven't  given  my  highly  restricted  group 
of  New  York  friends  a  chance  to  say  any  of  the  wonderful 
things  they  might  say  under  such  impressive  circumstances. 
I  haven't  felt  sure  enough  that  I  should  get  away.  This  won't 
go  unless  I  do. 

Then  he  has  gone.     So  much  for  that. 

Some  day,  although  you  haven't  sanctioned  such  a  thing,  I 
shall  write  to  you  from  France.  I  don't  see  how  you  can  pre 
vent  such  an  awkward  occurrence.  Perhaps  this  will  be  after 
they  really  say  they  will  take  me.  I  understand  that  American 
cheek  isn't  all  they  ask.  You  never  can  tell — I  may  bluff  my 
way  into  the  sky — even  if  they  are  rather  haughty  about  the 
engine. 

Anyway,  I  wish  you  would  extend  my  heartiest  greetings  to 
your  mother  and  Doctor  Grayl  and  that  you  would  tell  Anson 
I  hope  he  will  forgive  me  for  the  perversity  of  writing  to  you 
instead  of  to  him.  So  good  a  philosopher  as  he  is  will  see  at 
once  that  I  had  no  parting  apology  reason  for  addressing  him. 
Besides,  writing  to  a  literary  person  is  a  stiff  job  when  you're 
fussed.  My  mind  will  be  more  settled  when  the  boat  gets 
started.  I'll  write  to  him  between  submarines. 

Faithfully, 

R.  H.  R. 

My  mother  shook  her  head  over  the  whole  Rudley 
business. 

"A  wild  boy,"  was  her  summing  up. 

"And  yet,"  said  my  father,  "wild  boys  will  be  a  lot 
of  use  in  this  war.'* 

"I  don't  mean,"  my  mother  rejoined,  "that  he  isn't 
too  good  to  send  to  slaughter." 

Sarah  laughed  unpleasantly.  "He's  found  a  new 
game." 

It  was  as  if  she,  too,  had  said,  "Gambler!" 


158  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

IV 

I  came  back  to  New  York  in  a  rage  of  great  intentions. 
As  I  told  my  father  in  that  snug  talk  we  had  on  the 
day  before  Sarah  and  I  started  away  from  the  valley 
(through  a  wonderful  swirl  of  snow),  the  way  to  the 
thing  I  had  set  out  to  do  in  that  first  stage  had  begun 
to  seem  much  clearer.  If  there  were  moments — savage, 
slumpy  times — when  I  seemed  to  have  accomplished 
nothing  at  all,  when  I  seemed  simply  to  have  dawdled 
and  stared,  there  were  many  others  in  which  I  could 
see  that  being  caught  up  by  all  sorts  of  accidental,  ob 
jectively  trivial  things  might  have  a  margin  of  profit 
— that  real  experience  can't  have  a  logical  order. 

In  the  detachment  of  the  old  home  I  began  to  see 
new  meanings.  It  was  possible  in  that  quiet  to  under 
stand  that  the  noise  we  call  a  city  has  the  symphonic 
quality  of  being  made  up  of  obscurely  co-ordinated  ele 
ments  any  one  of  which  may  be  and  perhaps  must  be 
vague  enough  in  itself.  And  it  was  possible,  too,  to 
surmise  that  in  the  still  larger  orchestration  of  all  of 
life  there  would  be  of  necessity  the  same  complexity  of 
effect.  So  that  unless  one  had  distance  in  which  to 
gather  and  focus  the  sounds  there  must  often  be  the 
appearance  of  detached  and  meaningless  tootings  of 
individual  expression. 

It  does  not  matter  that  any  such  fancy  should  be 
utterly  trite  as  a  matter  of  philosophy.  I  am  concerned 
in  the  one  vital  point — the  revealed  instinct  of  Wish. 
I  must  know  for  myself,  by  listening  now  beside  this 
player  in  the  great  orchestra,  and  now  beside  that,  not 
what  is  the  true  meaning  of  the  symphony — that  is  be 
yond  human  ken — not  merely  what  would  be  in  each 
player's  heart,  pointing  to  which  instrument  or  which 
tune  he  would  play  if  he  had  his  free  choice,  but  just 
what  is  the  common  dream,  if  there  is  a  common  dream, 
that  lights  the  pages  of  the  scores. 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  159 

When  my  father  said,  back  in  the  summer,  "Isn't 
this  rather  a  large  order?"  he  was  speaking  without 
irony.  I  knew  that  he  didn't  wish  to  check  or  dis 
courage  me.  He  would  know  that  sheer  bigness  could 
be  no  deterrent.  He  must,  however,  have  felt  the  ob 
ligation  to  suggest  that  the  question  is  big,  to  suggest, 
perhaps,  that  the  question  is  more  inclusive  than  any 
first  impulse  might  have  measured. 

"And  yet,"  I  said,  "it  may  come  like  a  flash." 

He  understood  well  enough.  He  saw,  I  have  no  doubt, 
the  gambling  instinct  bluffing  the  whisperings  of  judg 
ment. 

We  say,  "If  I  had  known  what  I  should  have  to  go 
through  .  .  ." 

But  in  the  matter  of  discouragements  the  great  fact 
is  not  ignorance  of  obstacles.  These  are  pretty  well 
advertised.  The  great  fact  is  the  gambling  hope  of 
beating  the  game. 

We  need  to  be  fortified  not  so  much  against  unex 
pected  obstacles  as  against  the  chagrin  of  not  winning 
early — of  missing  that  "like  a  flash,"  and  of  beginning 
to  doubt  the  support  of  the  gambling  hope. 

I  suppose  Hope  is  the  sister  of  Desire.  Desire  is  the 
big,  strong  brother.  He  is  bound  to  go  on,  no  matter 
how  Sister  Hope  may  falter.  Yet  he  needs  her  tre 
mendously.  .  .  . 

I  am  working  out  these  basic  things  in  the  Book. 

And  this  journal  of  mine,  like  a  sister  to  the  Book, 
is  a  patient  listener  to  the  story  of  myself. 

The  right  to  a  little  time  of  dreaming  and  watching 
and  listening  I  have  earned  by  working  very  hard.  Call 
it  a  sabbatical  year.  Call  it  a  year  in  which  life  has  new 
horizons,  in  which  I  may  climb  any  prominence  and 
watch  the  other  travelers,  or  laborers,  or  skulkers  ...  or 
stare  at  other  dreamers  as  I  do  at  the  girl  across  the  way. 

One  doesn't  need  a  sabbatical  year  to  find  a  Felicia. 
Yet  only  my  sabbatical  year  happened  to  bring  about 


160  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

the  finding  of  this  Felicia.  Plant  in  a  man's  mind  the 
idea  of  finding  a  Felicia  and  we  have  abundant  explana 
tion  of  the  wanderer,  the  adventurer,  the  pioneer.  For 
if  we  substitute  the  image  of  a  nugget  for  the  image  of 
a  girl  the  explanation  is  just  as  vivid.  In  the  matter  of 
a  woman  the  trouble  would  begin  when  Felicia  disap 
pointed  ...  or  refused  to  be  found.  Looking  for  Felicia 
might  become  merely  an  adventurous  habit,  whereas 
pluralizing  a  Felicia  would  be  fatal.  One  doesn't  think 
of  two  destinations  .  .  two  stars  of  Bethlehem. 


For  Sarah  the  coming  back  to  New  York  had  some 
thing  of  defiance. 

The  day  of  our  coming  was  slushy,  with  a  wet  wind. 
But  the  slippery  city  was  no  longer  an  abstraction.  It 
might  be  an  uncompleted  experiment,  but  it  was  less 
mysterious.  I  believe  that  Sarah  knew  where  she  was 
going  in  both  meanings  of  the  phrase.  Her  head  was 
high  and  her  cheeks  responsive  to  the  tingle. 

Alonzo  parted  with  the  evening  paper  to  grin  a  wel 
come  and  run  us  up  in  the  elevator. 

Aunt  Paul,  who  had  joined  the  Rownings  at  Christ 
mas  dinner,  who  had  paid  her  annual  homage  to  "The 
Messiah,"  helped  in  the  functioning  of  a  settlement 
Christmas  tree,  entertained  on  New- Year's  Day  a  Mrs. 
Teenston,  a  very  old  friend  from  Alabama,  and  accom 
plished  other  diversions  and  duties  that  must  have  made 
the  interval  of  our  absence  rather  busy,  gave  us  wel 
come  with  a  closely  scrutinizing  cordiality. 

I  wondered  whether  she  saw  in  Sarah's  face  that  some 
thing  -v\  hich  had  seemed  to  me  like  defiance. 

Perhaps  what  she  saw  and  what  she  had  been  think 
ing  may  have  given  a  special  tenderness  to  her  greeting 
of  Sarah,  though  she  would  be  the  last  person  in  the 
world  to  commit  the  fault  of  making  this  apparent. 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  161 

"And  so,"  she  said,  "they  didn't  lock  the  home  cage 
when  they  got  you  back!'* 

"They  are  very  shrewd  parents,"  said  Sarah. 

"And  very  hopeful,"  said  I. 

It  soon  came  out — as  soon  as  might  be  without  losing 
the  quality  of  the  incidental — that  Rudley  had  made  a 
farewell  call. 

"He  looked  so  strong  and  earnest,"  said  Aunt  Paul, 
"and  was  so  far  from  slopping  over,  that  I  found  my 
feelings  horribly  mixed.  After  all,  he's  going  across  to 
fight." 

Evidently  she  had  made  up  her  mind  to  get  this  in. 
She  had  herself  to  justify  in  whatever  had  been  her 
manner  toward  him,  and  if  the  incident  was  to  be 
closed  as  to  Sarah  and  me  she  rather  preferred,  I  sus 
pect,  to  have  it  closed  decently.  It  was  like  folding 
his  hands  in  a  casket.  All  of  which  made  me  wince. 
There  is  no  comfort  in  being  thrown  back  on  your  own 
indignations.  It  is  more  exhilarating  to  fight  for  them. 

"I  had  a  letter  from  him,"  said  Sarah,  quietly. 

"Not  explaining  .  .  .?"  My  aunt  flared  into  intensity 
of  interest. 

"Explaining?"  Sarah  understood.  "No,  not  that. 
He  doesn't  know." 

My  aunt's  excitement  subsided. 

When  Sarah  said,  "He  doesn't  know,"  it  came  to  me 
sharply  that  the  same  fact  applied  to  Laura  Sherrick. 
If  Laura  Sherrick  didn't  know,  what  was  to  be  done 
about  her?  Rudley  is  on  the  high  seas.  Laura  Sherrick, 
I  reminded  myself,  might  dumfound  us  at  any  moment. 
Sarah's  worst  enemy,  if  she  had  an  enemy,  couldn't  wish 
an  awkwardness  more  acute  than  that.  Yet  it  surely 
seemed  to  impend.  There  could  be  no  way  out.  Sarah 
couldn't  go  on  seeming  to  be  the  adoring  friend  . .  . 

As  if  to  drive  in  a  wedge  against  any  evasion  Pine  called 
on  Sarah  last  night. 

This  was  not  so  startling  as  facing  Laura  Sherrick 


162  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

herself.  A  sense  of  the  alternative  made  Pine  seem  less 
annoying. 

Sarah  surprised  me  by  greeting  him  with  a  sort  of 
dash.  Women  go  into  such  heartless  exuberances  with 
out  any  apparent  consciousness  of  the  immoral  side  of 
them. 

Pine  was  not  wearing  his  "Desire  of  Love"  manner. 
He  came  in  with  that  peering,  eager,  uncombed  look  as 
if  some  one  had  just  awakened  him  to  say  that  there 
was  a  fire.  The  truth  is,  I  suppose,  that  he  had  had  a 
sudden  thought  and  was  acting  thereon  before  it  flickered 
out. 

"I  did  call  up,"  he  said,  brightly,  "to  ask  if  I  might. 
Last  week.  You  weren't  here.  Only  a  foreign-sound 
ing  voice — the  maid,  I  guess.  So  that  I  felt  that  I  had 
asked  you." 

"I  never  should  have  expected  you  to  do  anything  of 
the  kind,"  said  Sarah.  "I  mean  use  a  telephone — you 
hating  inventions  so  desperately." 

"How  droll!"  said  Pine.  "I  suppose  the  telephone  is 
an  invention,  though  one  thinks  of  it  only  as  a  brutal 
kind  of  convenience,  a  sort  of  benign  nuisance.  At 
that,  I  believe  the  world  would  be  better  without  it. 
Don't  you  at  least  half-way  believe  that,  Mr.  Grayl?" 

"About  a  quarter  way,"  said  I. 

"The  thing  is  giving  all  of  us  the  jumps.  Of  course 
I  wouldn't  have  it  in  my  place.  But  it  gets  one  every 
where.  It  is  hammering  at  the  ear-drum  of  the  world. 
It  has  killed  the  art  of  letter-writing,  or  finishing  up 
the  job  the  typewriter  began — if  that  did  come  first.  I 
forget.  I  should  like  to  forget  all  such  things  and  get 
back  to  .  .  ." 

My  aunt  joined  us  and  served  to  quell  Pine  for  a 
moment.  I  wondered  whether  she  would  increase  or 
diminish  the  chance  that  he  might  read  verses  to  us. 
Possibly  she  prevented  him  from  dismissing  her  as  negli 
gible  by  her  way  of  saying: 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  163 

"You  were  trying  to  forget  something.  Don't  let 
me  interrupt." 

"Good  Lord!"  Pine  exclaimed.  "Don't  you  suppose 
we're  all  in  the  same  boat?  I  never  forget  anything 
but  the  thing  I  should  remember.  It's  pitiful,  really. 
For  example,  there  is  a  splendid  legend  I  found  some 
where  in  Sanskrit  literature.  And  it  got  away  from  me. 
Sometimes  I  have  believed  it  was  in  the  'Atharva- 
veda.'  Sometimes  in  the  'Catapatha  Brahmana.'  But 
I've  never  been  able  to  find  it  again.  I  can't  remember 
anything  of  it  but  a  wonderful  White  Girl — all  white, 
you  understand,  white  hair,  white  eyes,  everything 
white,  like  marble,  but  living  .  .  .  and  amazingly  beau 
tiful.  There  was  much  more — including  the  point  of 
the  whole  story.  It  is  maddening  to  lose  a  possession 
like  that.  .  .  .  As  if  you  had  opened  a  treasure-box  to 
look  for  a  wonderful  jewel  for  which  at  last  you  had 
found  a  setting,  and  then  discovered  that  it  was  gone, 
vanished." 

"Speaking  of  forgetting — or  remembering,"  said 
Sarah,  "I've  wanted  to  remember  to  ask  you  about 
Anarchism." 

"How  extraordinary!"  cried  Pine. 

"Why?"  demanded  Sarah. 

"You  mean  that  you  wanted  me  to  explain  it?" 

"If  you  can,"  suggested  Sarah. 

"You  amaze  me!"  Pine  said.  "Really,  you  do.  I 
never  have  supposed  that  any  one  wanted  to  have 
Anarchism  explained.  I  thought  people  sat  up  nights 
trying  to  think  of  ways  of  misunderstanding  it." 

"It  must  have  a  meaning  "  Sarah  persisted.  "I  want 
to  know  about  it." 

My  aunt  looked  amused. 

Pine,  for  some  reason,  was  not  eager  on  this  point. 
"I'll  send  you  a  booklet  that  may  help  you.  It  is  a 
philosophy,  you  know.  If  you  could  forget  about  the 
bombs  you  might  be  able  to  get  at  it.  I'm  not  big 


164  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

enough  to  explain  it.     I  wish  you  could  listen  to  Anna 
Jassard." 

"I  should  like  to,"  Sarah  admitted. 

"You  mean,"  I  interposed,  "that  the  bombs  are  not 
part  of  the  philosophy." 

"Precisely.  The  bombs  are  not  by  any  means  as 
much  associated  with  Anarchism  as  your  electric  chair 
is  associated  with  your  philosophy — that  is,  with  your 
system." 

"My  system.  .  .  .?" 

"Of  course  I  mean  the  existing  system.  I  should 
hardly  wish  to  accuse  you  of  it.  Actually" — and  Pine 
swept  us  with  an  exalted  glance — "Anarchism  in  its 
essence  belongs  in  the  realm  of  pure  poetry." 

"Well,"  remarked  my  aunt,  "I've  run  upon  some 
poetry  .  .  ." 

"Inevitably !"  Pine  exclaimed.  "You  would,  natural 
ly.  Nevertheless,  absolutely  free  poetry,  and  conse 
quently  utterly  pure  poetry — which  is  what  I  should 
wish  you  to  think  of — would  carry  you  to  the  point  of 
union,  carry  you  straight  to  the  incandescent  heart  of 
perfect  beauty." 

"And  yet,"  I  put  forward,  "poetry  must  have  a 
language,  and  if  it  has  a  language  it  must  have  laws 
of  some  kind — some  accepted  code  by  which  it  is  to 
be  understood.  There  can  be  no  language  without 
law." 

Pine  shook  his  head  vehemently.  "Beauty  knows  no 
law."  It  was  as  if  he  shook  off  all  responsibility. 

"It  always  seems  to  me,"  I  said,  "as  if  the  Anarchist 
wanted  to  get  up-stairs  without  using  steps." 

Pine  was  looking  intently  at  Sarah.  "Don't  make  me 
explain  Anarchism,"  he  said,  grimly.  "Some  of  us 
might  get  into  a  row.  And  I'm  not  a  combative  person. 
I  guess  I'm  a  passive  Anarchist.  I'm  letting  it  come — 
like  the  dawn,  or  spring.  You  know,  I  hate  arguing, 
and  one  can't  explain  without  arguing." 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  165 

"Perhaps,"  said  Sarah,  "we  should  have  kept  still 
until  you  were  through." 

"And  then  have  jumped  on  you  in  an  orderly  unison," 
I  suggested. 

"I  shouldn't  have  jumped,"  Sarah  said.  "I  just 
wanted  to  know  .  .  ." 

"I  once  wrote  a  thing,"  said  Pine,  "which  I  called 
'The  Anarch  Speaks.'  It  was  printed  in  an  honest 
magazine.  If  I  can  find  a  copy  I  shall  send  it  to  you, 
along  with  the  booklet.  But  now — now,  if  you  please, 
we  shall  talk  about  anything  else  you  like." 

He  became  eager-looking  again. 

"There  are  so  many  things  to  talk  about.  Such 
astounding  things  are  happening  in  art  and  in  music. 
Oh,  by  the  way — have  you  heard  about  Laura  Sherrick?" 

"No,"  Sarah  answered,  blankly. 

"  Disappeared.  Completely.  Vanished  like  the  notes 
of  my  Sanskrit  legend." 

"I  don't  understand,"  Sarah  said,  her  blank  look 
going  to  white. 

"All  of  a  sudden  there  is  no  Laura  Sherrick.  Miss 
Bransol  tells  me  she  left  a  note  saying  that  she  was 
going  away  and  didn't  know  when  she  would  be  back. 
Having  some  human  curiosity,  I  called  up  the  Ardway 
office,  where,  as  you  know,  she  has  been  an  imposing 
secretary  person,  and  they  said  she  was  no  longer  with 
them.  And  there  you  are.  Curious,  isn't  it?  I  thought 
perhaps  you  might  have  some  explanation." 

"We  have  been  away,"  said  Sarah,  in  a  gray  voice. 

"Laura  is  such  a  level  individual,"  pursued  Pine, 
"that  one  can't  fancy  anything  flighty  about  her — of 
course  I'm  not  being  flippant  about  flight.  I  mean  that 
one  doesn't  look  to  her  to  be  grotesque  or  sensational. 
She  doesn't  do  funny  things.  She  has  too  good  a  sense 
of  humor." 

"Has  this  happened  within  a  week?"  my  aunt  asked, 
narrowly. 

12 


166  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Apparently  Pine  saw  nothing  subtle  in  the  question. 
"  I  have  no  idea  when  she  went.  I  heard  of  it  just  before 
New- Year's  Day.  I  suppose  she  will  enlighten  our  igno 
rance  when  she  is  ready." 

There  was  more  to  Pine's  visit — too  much  more — in 
cluding  an  impulsive  decision  to  go  to  the  piano.  He 
played  with  what  seemed  to  me  like  astounding  dexterity, 
and  with  an  amount  of  feeling  which  we  might  have 
translated  better  at  another  time.  He  wanted  to  illus 
trate  some  corollary  between  verse  and  musical  nota 
tion.  It  may  be  that  he  got  our  silence  as  rapt  infatua 
tion.  I  couldn't  tell.  I  was  thinking  of  Laura  Sherrick 
.  .  .  and  Rudley.  Both  disappearing  at  about  the  same 
time. 

Perhaps  Rudley  really  is  on  the  high  seas. 

Perhaps  Laura  Sherrick  is  somewhere  else.  .  .  . 

One  has  to  have  passports.  There  is  a  huge  intricacy 
about  getting  across  at  this  time. 

One  is  never  likely  to  guess  such  things  rightly.  In 
all  probability  this  guess  is  absurd. 

But  what  difference  does  it  make?  We  have  closed 
that  book. 

VI 

Theoretically  we  should  have  distrusted  Pine — as  a 
matter  of  association.  Laura  Sherrick  had  brought  us 
together.  She  had  approved  him,  extolled  him.  Surely 
this  was  a  fair  basis  for  prejudice. 

Yet  Sarah,  by  whatever  process,  if  there  was  a  proc 
ess  (though  of  course  this  is  the  most  unlikely  thing 
in  the  world),  not  only  gave  no  sign  of  disliking  him  in 
the  first  uneventful  moments  of  that  call,  but  has  since 
shown  quite  plainly  that  she  is  not  letting  the  shadow 
of  the  absconding  common  friend  disturb  her  impression 
of  the  poet.  If  this  is  not  a  fact  it  will  be  necessary  to 
conclude  that  she  has  decided  to  pretend  that  it  is. 
There  may  be  a  sort  of  irony  in  her  feeling.  I  suspect 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  167 

that  women  are  often  ironical  in  such  situations,  that 
they  can  get  a  gratification  from  exploiting  the  obvious 
ly  wrong  man.  Not  merely  for  any  effect  on  others,  nor 
simply  in  defiance  of  circumstances,  but  in  obedience 
to  some  instinct  for  affronting  their  own  inner  sense  of 
natural  obligation — having  fun  with  their  consciences. 

Probably  she  takes  Pine  as  I  fancy  she  took  his 
"Desire  of  Love,"  in  a  strictly  objective  way,  as  some 
thing  you  might  poke  with  a  stick  and  examine  without 
peril  of  contamination. 

I  wish  I  had  her  easy,  feminine  indifference  to  the 
logic  of  things. 

I  wish,  too,  that  I  could  dislike  Pine  satisfactorily. 

The  odd  thing  is  that  disliking  people  Simply  won't 
move  by  logic.  It  annoyed  me  to  have  him  ask  me 
(over  the  despised  telephone)  to  go  with  him  to  a  meet 
ing  at  Cooper  Union.  But  I  couldn't  dislike  him  enough 
not  to  go.  Moreover,  if  I  have  tried  closing  some  doors 
I  want  much  to  open  others.  I  have  said  to  myself 
that  I  shall — that  I  must — nowhere  turn  aside  from 
men;  that  if  it  is  the  common  joke  to  look  for  "life"  at 
Pink  Poodles,  in  cabarets,  or  in  attic  junk-shops,  the 
alternative  is  not  to  crawl  about  on  a  track  like  a  trolley- 
car.  The  alternative  to  a  joke  need  not  be  a  stupidity. 
And  alternatives  themselves  are  a  joke.  The  Pink 
Poodle  may  be  more  sensible  than  one  of  my  Aunt  Por 
tia  Rowning's  Institutions.  .  .  . 

Anyway,  I  went  with  Pine  to  the  Cooper  Union  meet 
ing.  I  went  feeling  that  he  was  planning  to  show  me 
Anna  Jassard. 

But  she  was  not  among  the  speakers.  It  was  a  So 
cialist  gathering,  as  I  soon  discovered.  This  made  me 
wonder  why  Pine  was  drawn.  It  turned  out  that  his 
friend  Bruno  Fischer,  of  the  profound  voice,  was  to  speak 
about  Karl  Marx.  And  a  vivid,  forceful  thing  the 
speech  was.  A  big,  hairy  man  went  farther  back  to 
Robert  Owen.  The  moderns  were  taken  up  by  a  young 


1C8  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

woman  with  a  cloud  of  black  hair  and  a  curious,  nervous 
gesture  with  her  left  hand.  Her  voice  was  extraordi 
narily  sharp  and  inflectionless,  but  something  in  her 
earnestness,  in  her  swift,  clean-bladed  method  of  cutting 
her  way,  had  for  me  a  hypnotic  force. 

There  was  a  contagion,  too,  in  the  attention  of  that 
audience.  I  never  remember  to  have  seen  an  audience 
like  that.  I  didn't  have  the  sense  of  mass,  but  of  so 
many  individuals,  individuals  dressed  each  as  himself 
or  herself,  and  listening  as  individuals.  One  got  the 
impression  of  an  absolutely  self-generated  interest,  in 
being  there,  and  in  listening.  The  attention  was  not 
tense;  it  had  a  free  eagerness. 

And  yet  the  applause  and  the  silences  were  curiously 
unanimous.  A  sound  of  protest  or  derision,  following 
some  irony  or  arraignment,  seemed  to  sweep  like  a  wind 
across  the  crowded  hall.  It  was  as  if  these  messages 
touched  the  quick  of  a  common  desire.  .  .  . 

I  found  myself  absorbed  in  the  study  of  these  peo 
ple,  in  the  frankly  attentive  faces,  in  something  funda 
mentally  vital,  something  significant  of  rooted,  germi- 
native  power  honestly  responsive.  A  so-called  cultured 
audience  is  not  like  this.  In  comparison  a  fashionable 
audience  is  a  starched  mockery. 

There  is,  I  suppose,  such  a  thing  as  class  responsive 
ness;  so  that  rituals,  formulas  of  philosophy,  slogans  of 
partizanship,  each  gathering  its  group,  find  their  Greek 
chorus  in  their  own  way.  The  point  is  that  this  effect 
at  Cooper  Union  was  not  that  of  a  partizan  claque. 

The  lank  red-haired  man  who  sprang  up,  stretching 
out  his  hand  to  ask  a  question,  was  no  shambler  in  a  herd. 
He  wanted  to  know  something.  He  made  the  fact  known 
with  a  look  of  being  kindled,  yet  without  excitement  or 
awkwardness. 

If  there  was  a  single  unifying  sentiment  in  the  meet 
ing,  if  any  unifying  desire  in  that  audience  was  ex 
pressed  in  a  single  antipathy,  one  saw  that  antipathy 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  169 

objectified  in  a  word  held  aloft  like  a  bleeding  head  on 
a  pike — the  word  "capitalism." 

A  thing  called  "Capitalism"  is  absorbed  in  a  thing 
called  "War." 

The  war  cannot  be  right  because  capitalism  is  wrong. 

Nations  being  capitalistic,  severally  and  in  common, 
their  wars  settle  nothing.  .  .  . 

"You  see,"  I  whispered  to  Pine,  "some  one  is  to  build 
a  world  without  money.  Or  if  it  is  right  to  earn  money, 
it  is  sinful  to  have  it  after  you  have  earned  it.  In  any 
case  the  collective  work  of  the  state  must  be  done  with 
out  money,  for  if  the  state  uses  money  to  build  any 
thing  or  to  defend  itself  it  becomes  capitalistic.  I'm 
sure  there  is  something  better  than  this,  something  more 
affirmative  than  this,  in  Socialism.  What  do  you  sup 
pose  the  Socialist  wants?" 

"Why  not  ask  them?"  suggested  Pine.  He  appeared 
suddenly  to  acquire  an  immense  interest  in  having  an 
answer.  He  repeated  his  suggestion.  "Ask  them?" 

I  shook  my  head. 

"May  I  do  it?" 

"If  you  like,"  I  assented,  innocently. 

Pine  was  up  at  the  first  available  moment. 

"An  entirely  respectful  member  of  this  audience," 
he  said,  "has  asked  me  a  question  which  I  do  not  feel 
competent  to  answer.  He  has  said  to  me,  'What  do 
Socialists  want?'  That  seems  to  me  a  reasonable  ques 
tion.  Perhaps  some  one  may  feel  inclined  to  answer 
it." 

"By  the  chairman's  permission  I  will  try  to  answer 
it,"  said  the  young  woman  with  the  black  hair,  stepping 
forward  to  the  edge  of  the  platform  and  searching  me 
out. 

There  fell  one  of  those  theatrical  stillnesses. 

"Socialism  has  had  a  thousand,  maybe  ten  thousand, 
definitions.  Yet  what  Socialists  want  is  simple  enough. 
That  does  not  make  it  easy  to  describe  that  want. 


170  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Gravitation  or  electrolysis  is  simple,  too."  But  they  are 
not  easy  to  describe.  However  ...  I  was  appalled 
by  the  steady  earnestness  of  her  advance  ...  "I  think 
we  may  say  that  the  Socialist  wants  applied  brotherhood. 
Not  merely  brotherhood  talk,  but  brotherhood  practice 
— not  merely  a  sentiment  or  even  a  system,  but  a  life 
expressing  brotherhood.  I  think  we  may  say  that  the 
Socialist  wants  co-ordinated  liberty,  opportunity  safe 
guarded  by  true  equality,  a  fruit  of  labor  assured  by  a 
common  glory  of  labor,  peace  assured  by  common  need 
and  common  cause,  happiness  not  as  a  private  gift,  but 
as  a  public  blessing." 

She  spoke  these  rhetorical  sentences  with  no  rhetori 
cal  effect  whatever.  It  was  amazing  to  me  that  they 
should  not  sound  declamatory.  It  seemed  quite  in 
evitable  that  she  should  speak  precisely  as  she  did. 

"The  Socialist  wants"  .  .  .  she  added  another  passage 
with  a  pause  after  the  first  words  .  .  .  "the  Socialist 
wants  to  see  the  barriers  of  special  privilege  brushed 
away;  to  see  all  mankind  endowed  not  only  with  the 
name  of  liberty,  but  with  the  means  of  liberty;  to  see 
the  world  washed  clean  of  the  blood  of  conflict;  to  see 
a  garden  and  garden  ethics  where  a  jungle  and  jungle 
ethics  have  prevailed  since  the  world  began;  to  see  all 
humanity  come  into  humanity's  natural  inheritance  and 
the  ugliness  of  organized  cruelty  displaced  by  the  beauty 
of  universal  justice." 

A  moment's  silence  was  followed  by  a  sharp  burst  of 
applause  and  more  than  one  "Good!"  or  "Bravo!" 

Scores  of  eyes  seemed  to  be  asking  of  me,  "Are  you 
satisfied?"  "Does  this  tell  you  what  you  wanted  to 
know?"  ...  So  that  it  was  scarcely  startling  to  have 
that  girl  with  her  passionately  dark  eyes — she  still 
stood  at  the  edge  of  the  platfori* — ask  me,  pointedly 
and  quietly: 

"Have  I  in  any  way  made  it  clear.  .  .  .?" 

I  stood  up,  quaking  a  bit,  and  nursing  a  disgust  of  Pine. 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  171 

"Thank  you,"  I  said.  "You  have  stated  the  matter 
very  beautifully — " 

"I  wasn't  trying  to  be  beautiful,"  she  returned,  as  if 
with  some  resentment. 

"I  know,"  said  I.  "But  it  was  beautiful,  just  the 
same.  I  hope  you  will  not  resent  my  saying  that  all 
honestly  expressed  enthusiasms  are  on  the  way  to  being 
beautiful.  You  have  stated  a  creed.  You  have  painted 
an  ideal.  If  I  may  be  permitted  to  say  so — " 

"You  are  permitted  to  say  anything  that  comes  into 
your  head,"  rumbled  Fischer's  voice. 

" — the  ideal  you  have  painted  is  one  to  which  I  think 
a  great  many  people  who  do  not  call  themselves  Socialists 
might  find  it  not  very  difficult  to  subscribe.  It  is,  I  take 
it,  not  an  ideal  that  would  have  appealed  to  the  late 
Nietzsche.  And  because  you  were  telling  me  what 
Socialists  want  and  not  how  they  propose  to  get  it, 
you  haven't  needed  to  explain  the  means.  It  is  possible, 
I  suppose,  that  Socialists  are  not  unanimous  as  to  the 
means.  Nevertheless,  though  you  haven't  asked  me,  I 
do  want  to  say  that  as  an  ideal  it  seems  to  me  to  resemble 
remarkably  the  ideals  held  by  many  sects  of  earnest 
men  and  women  who  are  pushing  forward  behind  other 
banners.  The  chief  importance  of  that  resemblance,  if 
I  may  be  permitted — " 

"Go  ahead!"  cried  a  chorus  of  voices. 

" — the  chief  importance  of  that  resemblance,  to  a 
man  looking  on,  is  one  that  has  been  remarked  a  great 
many  times.  I  mean  that  it  suggests  how  often  con 
flict  in  the  world  comes  not  from  differing  ideals,  but 
from  a  differing  sense  of  methods  in  reaching  them." 

"But  you  can't  separate  methods  from  what  you  call 
ideals,"  exclaimed  the  man  with  the  red  hair. 

"We've  got  to  eat  in  the  mean  time,"  bawled  a  big 
voice  behind  me. 

"Yes,"  I  said,  "eating  in  the  mean  time — that's  the 
great  point — the  point  of  separation,  the  point  of  mis- 


172  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

understanding,  the  bloody  point.  At  least  that's  the 
way  it  looks  to  me.  And  it's  a  tremendously  important 
point." 

"Bet  your  life!"  murmured  a  girl  seated  near  by. 

"I  just  want  to  add  that  if  an  ideal  is  a  destination, 
and  if  sought  destinations  are  not  far  apart — if,  in  fact, 
they  so  often  seem  to  be  the  same  place — it's  a  pity  this 
is  not  more  commonly  recognized.  It's  a  pity  not  only 
because  it  might  reduce  conflict,  but  because  it  might 
make  each  of  us  a  little  less  cocky  about  the  indispen- 
sableness  of  our  own  method — our  own  road." 

"Put  it  a  little  plainer,"  piped  up  a  voice  from  some 
where. 

"I  don't  know  that  I  can,"  I  protested.  "I  never 
spoke  at  a  public  meeting  in  my  life  .  .  ." 

"The  lad's  all  right!"  shouted  another  voice. 

"What  I  mean  is  this:  Humanity  is  sick.  No  ques 
tion  about  that.  His  temperature  is  away  above  nor 
mal  (though  that's  one  of  the  foolishest  words  in  the 
dictionary),  you  hear  him  raving  a  lot,  and  he  is  in  a 
bad  way  altogether.  Around  him  are  a  bunch  of  doc 
tors — the  old-school  Autocracy  doctor,  the  newer-school 
Democracy  doctor,  the  Anarchist  doctor,  the  I.  W.  W. 
doctor,  the  Socialist  doctor,  the  Single  Tax  doctor,  and 
God  knows  how  many  more,  and  each  of  them  is  saying, 
'I  can  cure  him — if  I  have  complete  charge  of  the  case.9 
Poor  Humanity  is  too  sick  to  make  a  decision.  He  thinks 
he  wants  to  be  left  alone.  And  the  only  chance  for  any 
of  the  doctors  to  prove  his  theory  is  for  all  the  others 
voluntarily  to  go  away — which  they  won't  do." 

There  was  a  crisp  murmur,  which  might  have  been 
mostly  of  protest.  I  couldn't  tell.  I  could  only  hear 
at  the  end  of  it  the  roar  of  the  man  with  the  red  hair — 

"What  sort  of  doctor  are  you?" 

The  murmur  was  now  of  laughter — and  the  platform 
girl  was  still  looking  squarely  in  my  direction.  But  I 
felt  obliged  to  face  the  red  hair. 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  173 

At  this  Pine  sprang  up. 

"Perhaps"  ...  he  spoke  quietly,  but  with  that  odd 
sort  of  distinctness  .  .  .  "perhaps  he  isn't  one  of  the  doc 
tors.  Perhaps  he  is  only  that  poor  devil,  Humanity." 

I  regretted  the  crutch  handed  to  me  in  this  way,  even 
if  Pine  seemed  to  have  done  very  well. 

"In  that  case,"  I  said  to  the  girl  on  the  platform, 
"Humanity  thanks  you." 

The  pair  of  us  sat  down,  I  with  a  sense  of  feverishness 
about  the  neck.  .  .  . 

VII 

There  was  more  of  it,  but  I  am  writing  only  the  part 
that  has  most  affected  my  own  emotions  and  my  own 
studies,  for  the  encounter  with  Fischer  after  the  meet 
ing,  and  much  of  short-range  talk  with  other  individuals 
of  the  group,  gave  me  no  more  than  an  accentuation  of 
the  feeling  already  clearly  known  to  me — the  feeling 
that  I  am  to  be  recognized  as  living  in  the  outer  dark 
ness  and  that  I  am  not  at  all  fitted  to  be  a  torch-bearer. 

Pine  explained  in  the  course  of  our  walk  up  Fourth 
Avenue  that  he  had  not  suggested  that  Sarah  go  with  us 
because  sometimes  such  meetings  were  "rather  rough." 

"Or  maybe,"  he  added,  "I  should  say  rather  high- 
spirited.  Not  that  I  think  your  sister  is  a  fragile  creat 
ure.  At  the  same  time  .  .  ." 

"Of  course,"  I  assented. 

"Really  she  would  find  an  Anarchist  meeting  much 
less  likely  to  become  boisterous.  Vehement,  naturally. 
An  absolute  splendor  of  conviction — sometimes  a  blast 
furnace  flame.  But  they  have  the  clear-shining  vision. 
And  it  holds  them  high  and  steady." 

"I'm  beginning  to  see,"  I  said,  "that  the  visions  are 
all  pretty  much  alike.  I'm  a  trifle  discouraged.  I  be 
lieved  that  if  men  happened  to  have  the  same  sense  of 
destination  things  might  go  very  well.  But  they  spend 
their  whole  time  fighting  on  the  road.  It's  pitiful." 


174  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"But  the  fighting  on  the  road  is  the  very  thing  the 
Anarchist  objects  to,"  insisted  Pine.  "The  very  thing. 
The  creed  of  the  Anarchist  is  the  one  creed  that  stands 
out  as  most  definitely  not  to  be  translated  into  terms  of 
violence.  The  mildest  Socialism,  for  example,  that  ever 
was  invented  would  look  violent  beside  Anarchism." 

He  made  a  gesture  implying  something  of  an  exalted 
tranquillity. 

"Evidently,"  I  said,  "you're  talking  about  the 
Anarchists'  dream,  just  as  our  friend  on  the  platform 
was  talking  about  the  Socialists'  dream.  These  dreams 
are  very  handsome.  You  might  prove  that,  as  com 
pared  with  being  carried  along  on  a  rose-colored  cloud, 
even  the  softest  hair  mattress  was  relatively  violent. 
But  the  affair  on  the  road  to  these  things  is  precisely 
what  we  all  are  interested  in.  I  haven't  been  able  to 
see  that  you  Anarchists  are  not  as  willing  as  any  others 
to  fight  on  the  road.  You  certainly  have  sounded  like 
it — quite  without  regard  to  the  nitroglycerin." 

Pine  laughed  and  put  a  hand  on  my  shoulder. 

"Grayl,  I'm  only  just  beginning  to  realize  your  con 
trol  at  that  meeting.  I  can  see  now  that  you  would 
like  to  have  ripped  them  up." 

I  protested  that  I  was  not  a  ripper,  but  that  it  was 
irritating  to  find  that  people  are  neither  unified  nor 
separated  by  their  dreams;  that  desires,  which  they  don't 
understand  at  all,  are  not  really  translated  into  clreams, 
but  into  conflict. 

"Take  yourself,  Pine,"  it  suddenly  occurred  to  me 
to  thrust  at  him,  "what  is  your  dominating  desire?" 

He  waited  long  enough  to  make  a  choice  between  dif 
ferent  ways  of  putting  it,  his  face  turned  upward. 

"You  know,"  he  said,  "I  was  born  on  a  farm — in 
Iowa — and  ever  since  I  was  a  boy  on  that  farm,  working 
more  hours  than  would  now  fit  into  a  day,  and  poring 
far  into  the  night  over  books  of  poetry,  I  have  wanted 
to  be  somewhere  that  was  not  in  the  least  like  a  farm; 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  175 

and,  now  that  I  have  been  fifteen  years  in  a  city,  I  don't 
want  it  to  be  in  the  least  like  fire-escapes,  either.  I 
should  like  it  to  be  a  soft,  indolent  place,  without  weather, 
and  gorgeously  colored.  In  it  there  would  be  a  retreat, 
very  simple,  but  exquisitely  made,  like  one  of  those 
lacy  Japanese  things  carved  out  of  ivory.  There  would 
be  a  vast,  an  absurdly  big,  fireplace  shedding  a  slanting, 
tremulous  light  over  furry  rugs,  tapestries  stained  by  the 
fingers  of  history,  divans  over  which  a  surf  of  pillows 
broke  in  gorgeous  mellow  tones  like  lapis  lazuli  and  jas 
per.  Where  the  player  could  see  the  hearth  out  of  the 
corner  of  his  eye,  and  look  straight  into  the  sunset 
through  a  lattice  window,  I  should  have  a  piano  of  rose 
wood  inlaid  with  silver.  I  have  seen  the  day  when  I 
should  have  wanted  incense  and  a  suit  of  rusty  armor. 
But  of  course  we  get  past  those  things.  And  then"  .  .  . 
Here  his  voice  took  on  a  quality  that  recalled  a  certain 
poem  .  .  .  "Then  I  should  want  the  one  girl,  whom  I 
should  never  completely  understand,  but  who  would 
understand  all  that  I  understood,  and  love  all  that  I 
loved;  who  would  be  my  audience  and  my  fame;  who 
for  me  would  forever  express  the  living  essence  of  dreams; 
who  would  incarnate  all  images  of  charm,  personify  that 
perfection  of  peace  which  is  the  proof  of  beauty  and  give 
the  last  and  eternal  definition  to  love." 

He  made  a  gesture  toward  the  stars. 

And  I  laughed. 

The  turn  of  his  head  interrogated  me.  But  there  are 
some  laughs  one  never  can  successfully  explain. 

I  fancy  I  was  thinking  mostly  of  his  apparent  con 
tentment  with  a  kind  of  maudlin  remoteness  in  his 
vision,  as  if  it  were  not  the  desire  of  a  situation,  but  of 
a  picture  that  was  working  in  him  ...  a  picture  that 
might  without  a  pang  be  turned  face  to  the  wall  as 
something  to  be  pottered  over  again. 

I  was  thinking,  too,  that  I  am  my  sister's  brother, 
and  that  Pine  might  have  made  his  sketch  with  a  freer 


176  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

hand  under  other  circumstances.  However,  having 
heard  his  "  Desire  of  Love,"  I  was  abundantly  supplied 
with  possible  details. 

In  the  end  I  knew  that  my  laugh  had  simply  reacted 
to  the  disproportionate.  Pine's  earthly  heaven  was 
funny  on  Fourth  Avenue.  And  his  "one  girl"  became 
rather  confused  as  a  vision  by  seeming  rather  plural. 
Then  there  was  the  irony  of  Laura  Sherrick  .  .  .  crown 
ing  him  with  compliments.  Not  to  speak  of  a  distor 
tion  introduced  by  the  idea  of  Sarah. 

So  that  you  might  say  that  Pine  had  been  quite  as 
absurd  in  his  own  way  as  a  certain  other  person  in  his 
talk  about  Felicia. 

VIII 

Felicia,  by  the  way,  knits  more  devotedly  than  ever 
— at  the  window.  Which  reminds  me  that  Sarah  has 
begun  to  knit;  and  my  aunt  is,  I  am  sure,  meditating 
resuming  her  practice  of  the  art.  Aunt  Paul  has  inti 
mated  that  in  this  field  she  once  acquired  a  highly 
specialized  dexterity,  She  exhibits  the  reserve  of  an  old 
knitter. 

Within  the  last  few  days  my  aunt  and  Sarah  have 
had  the  services  of  a  dressmaker — a  nervous,  angular, 
German  woman  in  whose  presence  it  is  necessary  not 
by  any  chance  to  make  any  remarks  about  the  war. 
It  appears  that  she  is  rather  a  remarkable  dressmaker, 
with  a  record  of  some  service  at  Clarette's,  in  Paris; 
that  her  dress  ideas  are  not  at  all  German;  and  that 
she  worked  with  a  preternatural  rapidity,  which  may  be 
mere  nervousness,  but  which  is  held  to  have  an  impor 
tant  bearing  on  the  bills.  Mrs.  Shrecker  has  a  voice 
that  is  penetrating  even  in  its  whispers.  Thus  when  I 
happened  to  pass  the  door  of  the  room  in  which  she  was 
in  consultation  with  Sarah  and  my  aunt  over  thickets 
of  dress  goods,  the  words  trailed  after  me,  "I  have  a 
nephew  who  is  a  cripple  like  that  ..." 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  177 

My  aunt  pursues  invisible  activities  with  regard  to 
suffrage,  which  she  tells  me  is  to  be  wrested  from  New 
York  State  this  year.  These  activities  are  never  made 
very  clear,  but  it  is  true  that  she  has  a  settled,  easy, 
smooth-running  busyness  that  would  in  any  case  need 
neither  publicity  nor  approval.  She  is  strong,  too,  for 
Single  Tax.  If  she  lauds  suffrage  and  Single  Tax  (she 
pronounces  it  with  capitals)  she  will  experience  that 
superior  joy  possible  only  to  a  woman  with  a  sister-in- 
law.  I  am  sure  that  she  expects  any  triumph  for  suf 
frage,  in  particular,  utterly  to  blight  Portia  Masterton 
Rowning. 

It  is  hard  to  fancy  anything  as  withering  my  aunt 
Portia.  One  has  the  feeling  that  if  anything  hit  my 
aunt  Portia,  even  suffrage,  it  would  receive  some  injury 
from  the  impact.  I  am  sure  that  Aunt  Paul  did  not 
take  up  suffrage  with  any  malice.  But  I  am  suspicious 
about  the  Single  Tax.  Her  brother's  formidable  wife 
has  an  overbearing  scorn  with  regard  to  Single  Tax — a 
kind  of  upholstered  truculence — that  would  tend  to  make 
any  ordinary  person  rather  sympathetic  toward  the 
issue,  if  it  did  not  incite  an  open  allegiance. 

It  is  because  my  aunt  is  to  preside  at  something  that 
the  seamstress  has  been  here,  to  leap  whenever  the  par 
rot  utters  one  of  those  playful  trial  notes,  and  to  enforce 
non-military  conversation. 

One  day,  indeed,  something  was  said  about  the  war 
and  in  an  instant  the  talk  was  afire.  From  one  innocent 
inevitable  word  to  another  the  flame  jumped  until  Mrs. 
Shrecker  burst  out,  like  the  back-draught  of  a  furnace, 
with  a  tirade  of  hysterical  denunciation  of  the  whole 
non-German  world.  Sarah  told  me  that  her  face  became 
dreadful  to  look  at  during  the  moments  of  that  red 
anger.  Her  sharp  quivering  voice  broke  at  last  in  tears. 

"  Ach  Gott!  Such  devil  English,  and  such  heepocrite, 
money-grab  Americans! — making  guns  my  brothers  to 
kill!" 


178  THE   GREAT  DESIRE 

It  must  have  been  painful,  and  must  have  called  for 
all  of  my  aunt's  ingenuity.  Seemingly  diplomatic  rela 
tions  with  a  good  seamstress  are  not  lightly  to  be  broken 
off. 

Mrs.  Shrecker's  husband  is  a  baker,  working  some 
where  in  Third  Avenue.  She  has  three  brothers  in  Ger 
many — all  in  the  war.  A  fourth  brother  is  an  American 
marine  at  Norfolk.  There  is  something  fearfully  earnest 
about  those  full  eyes,  which  have  a  fever  of  energy  in 
them,  and  her  bruised  smile  comes  with  an  effect  of 
utter  kindliness.  Leave  out  the  question  of  Germany, 
and  Mrs.  Shrecker  is  a  pleasant,  quick-stepping  part  of 
our  scheme  of  things — like  some  millions  more  in  the 
same  situation.  Life  continues  to  be  largely  a  matter 
of  leaving  out  questions. 

I  asked  Alonzo  to-day  what  he  thought  about  the 
war — his  devotion  to  extras  gave  a  pertinence  to  the 
inquiry. 

Usually  Alonzo  seems  like  a  part  of  the  switchboard 
or  the  elevator.  It  was  not  until  I  met  him  one  eve 
ning  walking  beside  a  little,  completely  black  girl,  with 
teeth  even  whiter  than  his,  and  acquired  a  sense  of  his 
smart  style  of  stepping  and  man-about-town  air,  that 
I  began  to  separate  him  as  a  person.  His  face  is  com 
monly  of  a  singular  blankness,  unassembled,  as  if  he 
were  not  merely  imperfectly  awake,  but  as  if  his  astral 
self  were  in  some  far  place.  When  he  accepts  mental 
contact,  as  in  the  case  of  my  question,  his  face  twitches, 
stirs,  becomes  human,  and  then  goes  through  an  aston 
ishing  process  of  unfolding,  and  unfolding  to  a  point 
of  grotesque  transformation,  recalling  one  of  those 
examples  of  hastened  tadpole  evolution  in  the  movies. 

"Looks  like  we'll  have  to  go  over  and  lick  'em,  Mr. 
Grayl." 

This  was  Alonzo's  summing  up  of  the  war  situation. 
It  was  as  American  as  if  he  had  been  of  quite  another 
color. 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  179 

"But  war  hurts,  Alonzo." 

"Hurts?"  Alonzo's  grin  twisted  over  the  word. 
"Well,  y'  know  what  Sherman  said.  I  guess  it  is." 

"But  how  would  you  feel  .  .  .?" 

"Oh,  I'd  go!  I'd  like  to  git  out.  I'd  go  quick.  I 
got  a  cousin  in  a  colored  regiment.  He's  some  nigger, 
too." 

"And  when  you  come  back.  .  .  .?" 

"I'm  thinkin'  about  bein'  a  shofer." 

The  road  is  quite  clear  to  Alonzo.  He  will  perhaps 
be  a  soldier  in  a  snappy  khaki  suit;  and  come  back,  and 
be  a  chauffeur,  and  marry  the  little  very  black  girl. 
This  and  a  lot  more  he  has  dreamed  out  in  those  stupid 
empty  half-hours  at  the  switchboard.  But  first,  above 
and  before  all,  I  am  sure  that  he  would  like  to  "git  out." 
His  desire  doesn't  run  a  great  way  on  the  road. 

It  is  different  with  a  boy  I  met  at  the  cobbler's.  He 
is  the  cobbler's  son — married  last  year,  and  working  in 
a  clothing  factory.  He  was  seated  beside  his  father 
when  I  went  in.  I  had  the  feeling  that  they  had  been 
talking  earnestly,  for  the  father's  face  as  he  stood  up 
wore  a  left-over  expression  of  gravity. 

The  father  I  had  talked  with  before,  about  Wales, 
and  the  town  of  Aberystwyth,  where  he  was  born.  He 
has  a  fine  head.  There  is  a  grizzled  sadness  about  his 
look. 

When  he  had  wrapped  up  the  shoes  I  had  left  to  be 
mended  he  asked  me,  intently,  "Do  you  think  we'll 
go  into  the  war?" 

Our  discussion  was  as  blind  as  all  such  discussions 
have  to  be,  and  was,  I  suppose,  just  like  any  other,  save 
that  when  the  boy  joined  in  there  came  a  special  flavor 
of  something  that  had  gone  before.  I  knew  now  what 
they  had  been  talking  about. 

The  son  spoke  heatedly,  with  a  curious  boyish  fury, 
the  father's  face  turned  fully  toward  him  whenever  he 
spoke.  He  wanted  something  quick  and  crushing  to  be 


180  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

done  with  regard  to  Germany.  It  was  as  if  he  wished 
to  do  the  whole  thing  himself. 

"I  tell  the  old  man,"  he  said,  "that  it  ain't  England 
that's  getting  the  dirty  end.  We're  getting  it.  Ain't 
that  so?  Us  spit  on  and  laughed  at  by  the  Germans, 
and  the  whole  bunch  of  the  Allies  is  sore  on  us.  It's 
rotten.  I  always  said — away  back  to  the  Lusitania  ..." 

"Wait  a  minute,"  said  the  father.  "Wait  a  min 
ute  .  .  ." 

Presently  old  Drynd  put  before  me  the  thing  that  was 
in  the  back  of  his  mind.  "You'd  think,  to  hear  him, 
that  he  didn't  have  a  ypung  wife  and  baby.  I  tell  him 
he  better  not  bother  his  brains  about  the  war.  A  wife 
and  a  baby.  And  the  baby  sick.  What  can  he  do? 
What  can  I  do?  My  wife  can't  even  come  out  now 
when  the  door  rings.  Six  months  with  the  rheumatism. 
In  bed  some  days.  What  good  is  it  for  us  to  talk  about 
war?  I  leave  it  to  you." 

Young  Drynd  evidently  regarded  this  as  bad  form. 

"What's  the  use  of  talking?"  he  protested.  "I  ain't 
handing  you  a  gun  and  pushing  you  out,  am  I?  You 
don't  see  me  enlisting,  do  you?  New  York  ain't  in  the 
war  yet.  I'm  just  tellin'  you.  It  looks  rotten  to  me. 
How  do  we  know  what's  comin'?  I  only  said  I'd  like 
to  be  in  the  push,  and  pop  gets  in  a  stew  about  it." 

The  elder  Drynd  directed  his  gray  face  to  me.  "He's 
always  been  restless.  War  seems  to  make  them  more 
so.  I  hope  it's  nearly  over  .  .  ." 

At  this  point  a  painted  girl  came  in,  clapping  the  door 
shut  behind  her. 

As  I  gathered  up  my  package  she  flung  down  a  pair  of 
shoes  she  had  carried  under  her  cloak. 

"For  Gawd's  sake!  old  man,"  she  said  to  Drynd, 
"what  do  you  think  you  did  with  them  shoes?  They 
busted  again  in  three  days."  She  turned  to  me  as  I 
reached  for  the  door-knob,  smiling.  "Say,  these  war 
times  is  hell,  ain't  they?" 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  181 

IX 

When  I  found  a  note  from  Zorn  asking  me  to  see  him, 
"at  my  convenience,"  I  went  at  once  to  his  door.  This 
was  yesterday  in  the  middle  of  the  afternoon. 

A  tingle  of  something  that  was  more  than  curiosity 
urged  a  quick  response.  I  felt  an  eagerness  I  should 
not  have  known  how  to  explain. 

In  the  length  of  the  pause  after  the  pressure  on  the 
bell-button  I  concluded  that  he  was  absent.  But  at 
last  he  opened  the  door,  in  a  peremptory  way,  as  if  re 
buking  the  author  of  the  summons. 

"Come  in!"  he  said,  still  with  a  kind  of  peremptori- 
ness,  though  I  fancied  that  I  had  seen  a  relaxing  of  his 
aggressive  outline  when  it  became  apparent  who  his 
caller  was.  And  he  plunged  ahead  through  the  passage, 
leaving  me  to  close  the  door  and  follow  him. 

I  had  a  sense  of  his  isolation  in  the  apartment,  now 
that  both  Rudley  and  Stokes  had  gone.  The  effect  was 
gloomy,  pathetic.  A  place  like  that  acquires  almost  a 
tragic  absurdity  with  a  single  figure  in  it. 

He  did  not  look  toward  me  when  I  reached  the  sitting- 
room.  He  stood  beside  the  table,  his  face  turned  toward 
the  windows,  an  absent  look  in  his  eyes. 

"I  wanted  to  talk  with  you,"  he  said,  leaving  me  to 
infer,  if  I  had  cared  to  do  so,  that  we  were  to  talk  stand 
ing  in  the  middle  of  the  room. 

"You  see  .  .  .  there  is  no  one  else." 

This  might  have  justified  a  tone  of  desperation.  In 
fact,  it  was  simply  ruminative.  It  was  followed  by  a 
decision  to  go  and  find  one  of  his  snub-nosed  cigars. 
He  came  back  vaguely  through  smoke,  and  in  the  first 
pause,  while  still  but  imperfectly  visible  through  the 
sudden  cloud,  he  asked  me  to  sit  down.  He  himself 
moved  to  and  fro  in  the  room  several  times  before  swing 
ing  about  to  ask: 

"Did  you  ever  hate  anybody?" 
13 


182  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

To  this  ominous  challenge  I  could  answer  only  that 
I  rather  thought  I  never  had.  I  went  further  to  say 
that  if  I  ever  had  thought  of  the  matter  at  all  it  was  to 
conclude  that  I  was  not  a  very  good  hater. 

Zorn  looked  narrowly  at  the  cigar. 

"Very  likely,"  he  said,  "you  would  conclude  that 
hating  is  undesirable.  But  that  would  make  no  differ 
ence.  If  you  had  to  hate  you  would  hate.  Hating 
doesn't  go  by  reason  or  formula." 

"Maybe  it  is  like  love,"  I  suggested. 

"They  have  figured  out  that  the  power  to  love  and 
the  power  to  hate  go  together.  A  crazy  theory,  invented 
obviously  by  a  hater.  But  I  believe  hate  is  like  love  in 
its  way  of  happening.  We  think  in  both  cases  that  there 
is  a  reason.  There  is  a  cause,  but  there  isn't  a  reason." 

This  was  perhaps  profound,  and,  coming  from  Zorn, 
it  had  an  impressiveness  which  it  would  be  very  hard 
to  describe.  But  it  didn't  explain  why  I  had  been 
summoned. 

"I  think,"  said  Zorn,  "that  I  came  close  to  hating  in 
one  or  two  instances.  There  was  a  man  who  persistently 
hounded  a  woman — a  very  devil  of  a  man,  completely 
evil.  You  might  have  said  that  he  had  been  made  to 
be  hated.  He  personified  everything  we  should  hate. 
I  had  the  feeling  that  it  was  a  duty  to  hate  him,  though 
I  knew  that  he  simply  had  something  wrong  with  his 
brain,  or  that  maybe  his  soul  had  been  mangled  in  its 
birth  into  the  body.  But  I  never  got  much  farther  than 
a  nausea  of  dislike.  I  despised  him  bitterly.  Yet  hate 
.  .  .  no,  I  don't  think  I  got  to  that.  .  .  .  And  then  there 
was  a  woman — a  woman  with  the  face  of  a  highly  edu 
cated  angel  and  a  nature  such  as  Satan  might  have  used 
for  an  immensely  intricate  job.  I  might  have  .  .  . 
married  her  if  God  and  Satan  had  happened  to  be  in 
partnership.  Well,  it  came  about  that  circumstances 
in  which  I  was  not  connected  moved  to  reveal  her — ut 
terly,  as  if  lightning  had  slanted  through  her,  and  sud- 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  183 

denly  you  knew  every  horrible  fiber.  If  I  had  hated 
her  it  would  not  have  been  because  of  what  I  had  es 
caped,  nor  because  of  what  she  did  to  me.  It  would  not 
have  been  because  of  what  she  did  to  others.  It  would 
have  been  because  of  what  she  was.  She  belonged  to 
the  to-be-hated.  .  .  .  But  I'm  not  a  hater.  I'm  sure  of 
that." 

He  gave  a  single  suck  at  the  cigar,  then  added: 

"And  yet  I'm  not  at  all  sure  that  hating  isn't  good 
for  a  person — that  a  natural,  spontaneous  hatred  may 
not  carry  a  stimulation,  accentuating  our  affections.  If 
the  thing  went  by  reason  perhaps  we  ought  to  cultivate 
a  reasonable  assortment  of  hatreds.  I  have  no  doubt 
there  are  people  who  are  kindled  by  them.  .  .  .  But  I 
don't  ask  you  to  be  a  hater.  I'm  glad  you  are  not." 

"If  you  were  my  father  confessor,"  I  said,  "I  might 
have  to  admit  one  exception,  one  tendency  or  whatever 
you  would  call  it." 

"One  hatred?" 

"One  nebulous  influence.  If  I  ever  hated  any  one  I 
think  it  would  be  the  one  who  broke  my  back." 

"Good  God!"  Zorn  suspended  the  hand  holding  the 
black  cigar  and  stared  at  me  with  an  expression  of  horror. 
"The  one  .  .  .  Do  you  know?" 

I  shook  my  head. 

"You  don't  know..." 

He  seated  himself  in  a  tentative,  faltering  way  in  a 
chair  opposite  mine. 

"You  don't  know,  and  you  have  been  .  .  ." 

"I  haven't  hated.  How  could  I?  I  haven't  known 
whom  to  hate.  And  I  haven't  wished  to  know.  .  .  . 
Some  hired  person,  probably.  In  fact,  I  have  an  echo 
impression  of  a  tradition,  if  you  might  call  it  that — 
something  out  of  early  childhood  before  such  things  be 
gan  not  to  be  mentioned  any  more — that  some  care 
taker  dropped  me.  It  happens  very  often." 

"But" — Zorn's  Adam's  apple  moved  convulsively — • 


184  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"but  think  for  a  moment .  .  .  think  of  the  chance — God! 
You  must  never  let  that  grow  into  a  hatred — even  if 
you  never  knew  the  one.  Why,"  and  he  swayed  pro- 
testingly  toward  me,  "it  might  have  been  some  one 
who  loved  you — who  was  very  near  to  you — it  might 
have  been  that  splendid  aunt  of  yours,  for  example." 

"Yes,"  I  admitted,  "it  might  have  been  my  aunt. 
Of  course.  Perfectly  nice  people  have  dropped  babies. 
Nevertheless,  I  don't  think  it  was  my  aunt.  She  has  a 
way  with  her  hand  that  .  .  .  that  makes  me  think  she 
didn't  do  it." 

Zorn  had  the  look  of  being  appalled  at  the  thought  of 
such  an  analysis.  It  halted  him  for  a  moment.  Then 
he  made  as  if  to  offer  the  supreme  protest. 

"But  think,  my  son — think,  and  forever  forget  the 
whole  matter — can't  you  see  that  you  must  forget? — 
that  it  might  have  been  your  mother?" 

"Yes,"  I  said.  "I  have  thought  of  that— even  of 
that.  I  admit  that  it  was  a  deterrent — that  it  pushed 
me  away  from  the  foolishness  of  thoughts  about  hating. 
A  cripple  who  wasn't  bent  on  slow  suicide  wouldn't ..." 

"Yes,  yes!  I  know.  You  are  wise.  You  are  a  sub 
lime  rebuke."  As  if  noticing  that  this  was  by  way  of 
being  disconcerting,  he  added:  "It  is  plain  enough  that 
you  have  been  patient.  And  you  will  understand  and 
forgive  my  interest,  though  you  may  not  have  guessed 
why  we  came  to  this  subject.  If  I  hadn't  seen  your 
home  I  might  have  asked  you  in  the  first  place  quite 
another  question.  I  might  have  asked  you  whether 
you  could  understand  a  father's  hatred  of  his  children." 

This,  I  thought,  might  be  hard  to  understand  unless 
one  had  been  brought  up  to  believe  in  a  God  who  could 
hate. 

"Or  had  lost  sight  of  God  altogether,"  Zorn  added. 
"In  this  case  I  think  that  was  the  way  of  it." 

"In  this  case ?" 

"The  case  I'm  going  to  tell  you  about." 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  185 

So  that  now  I  was  to  get  the  thing  I  had  been  called 
to  hear. 

"  I  went  into  it  for  the  boy's  sake,"  said  Zorn,  turning 
to  the  windows.  "I  thought  it  would  mean  something 
to  him.  It  will  mean  something  to  him  .  .  .  when  he 
gets  it.  If  he  has  to  die  he  will  be  dying  with  a  different 
feeling,  and  some  of  those  who  are  left  behind  will  be 
living  with  a  different  feeling." 

The  cigar  had  gone  cold.  Zorn  lighted  it  again,  blow 
ing  the  smoke  upward  as  if  to  keep  me  in  sight. 

Then  came  the  whole  Rudley  story.  Not  consecu 
tively,  but  in  the  Zorn  way,  with  strange  parenthetic 
outbursts.  As,  for  example,  where  he  was  talking  about 
the  brains  of  this  extraordinary  father  as  he  had  analyzed 
him. 

"You  know,  once  in  a  while  a  man  is  born  like  that. 
I  suppose  his  sort  used  to  be  born  oftener,  and  in  other 
civilizations.  I  can't  make  him  seem  American.  Not 
merely  because  he  was  brutal  or  selfish.  There  is  no 
nationality  in  brutality  and  selfishness.  But  evidently 
he  had  that  frightful  parental  egotism,  that  head-of-the- 
house  egotism  that  seems  more  European  than  American. 
In  an  American  it  has  a  way  of  looking  comic.  It  never 
had  that  look  in  him.  A  strange  survival  ...  or  maybe 
you  would  say  a  reversion.  Yet  I  don't  think  it  was  a 
disease  of  vanity,  as  parental  brutality  so  often  is.  No. 
It  was  incidental  to  an  instinct  for  domination,  a  bull- 
necked,  bellowing  kind  of  domination  when  he  erupted. 
Perhaps  a  worse  kind  when  he  wasn't  erupting. 

"Mind  you,  I  have  never  seen  Wendell  Rudley,  but 
I  can  visualize  him  perfectly.  He  is  as  clear  to  me  as 
Robert  himself — a  big,  square-headed  man  with  hard 
gray  eyes,  and  fists.  He  has  a  piece  of  machinery  where 
other  men  have  a  brain,  a  wonderful  piece  of  machinery, 
and  as  capable  of  sentiment  as  a  machine.  We  are  in 
the  habit  of  thinking  that  a  man  has  to  have  imagina 
tion  to  succeed  in  business,  to  succeed  in  anything.  If 


186  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Wendell  Rudley  has  imagination  it  is  a  kind  never 
measured  or  accounted  for.  He  does  what  he  does  with 
sheer  driving  power.  He  bulls  through  because  he  hasn't 
the  imagination  that  holds  other  men  back  from  certain 
things.  He  has  a  rough-shod  brain.  Nothing  really 
annoys  him  but  being  retarded.  He  has  a  blind  spot  at 
the  point  where  other  men  would  see  scowls.  I  sup 
pose  he  must  have  a  deaf  spot  to  go  with  it. 

"You  know,  there  are  men  who  have  neither  sensi 
tiveness  nor  imagination  for  others  but  who  have 
vanity.  You  can  get  hold  of  such  men.  They  can  be 
trapped  finally.  But  this  man  has  no  vanity.  I'm  sure 
of  that.  When  you  meet  a  man  who  has  neither  sensi 
tiveness  nor  a  vanity  point  you  are  beaten  before  you 
begin." 

Zorn  swung  his  hand  hopelessly. 

"Imagine  such  a  man  a  father.  Imagining  him  a 
husband  simply  brings  up  a  very  old  picture.  The  poor 
creature  married  to  him  can  even  get  a  sort  of  grace  out 
of  it.  The  worse  he  is  the  more  she  may  shine,  in  a 
white  martyrdom  dear  to  those  who  revel  in  saints. 
But  children — American  children! — men  and  women  who 
are  to  go  out  from  him.  Think  of  them!  It  is  horrible ! 
.  .  .  horrible!" 

A  real  horror  was  in  Zorn's  face  as  if  he  were  seeing 
much  more  than  he  had  painted. 

'As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  man's  wife  was  a  superior 
woman."  His  eyes  rested  for  an  instant  on  that  picture 
between  the  windows.  "Naturally  the  testimony  of  a 
son  is  biased.  But  it  is  plain  enough  that  she  had  a  fine 
grained  power  in  her.  The  father  couldn't  prevent  the 
putting  of  that  power  into  her  children.  The  one  who 
does  the  borning  has  a  wonderful  advantage,  after  all. 
And  he  was  too  busy  plunging  through  the  world  to  pay 
much  attention  to  his  children  at  the  beginning  .  .  . 
except  that  occasionally  he  burst  into  the  process  of 
rearing  them  to  insist  that  they  must  be  vigorous.  He 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  187 

was  fond  of  saying  that  he  wanted  healthy  live  animals 
in  his  house.  There  was  to  be  no  mush  or  foolishness — 
no  flabby  Sunday-school  stuff.  This  applied  to  the  girl 
as  well  as  to  the  boy.  In  some  ways,  perhaps,  particular 
ly  to  the  girl.  He  had  a  Spartan  theory  about  sports, 
for  instance.  He  himself  gave  little  personal  attention 
to  sport.  The  only  games  that  caught  him  were  boxing 
and  cards.  When  Robert  was  seventeen  his  father  'took 
him  on'  with  the  gloves.  It  gave  the  father  a  chuckling 
delight,  evidently,  to  break  the  boy's  arm.  Yet  he  was 
as  much  delighted  to  have  the  boy  swing  angrily  with 
the  arm  that  wasn't  broken  and  knock  out  two  of  his 
parent's  teeth. 

"  Well,  while  the  mother  lived  she  was  there  to  inter 
cede,  as  mothers  will,  between  father  and  children. 
And,  as  I  say,  he  was  much  absorbed  in  his  affairs, 
which  grew  larger  by  great  leaps.  He  was  fond  of  taking 
chances,  and  seemed  always  to  win.  It  made  no  dif 
ference  whether  it  was  a  Legislature  or  a  wheat-pit.  I 
think  he  must  have  wished  there  was  some  way  in  which 
he  could  gamble  with  the  children.  In  the  matter  of 
them  he  insisted  that  the  mother's  system  was  all 
wrong.  He  was  particularly  brutal  in  his  emphasis  on 
this  point.  There  was  no  kind  of  insult  he  didn't  in 
vent.  When  the  mother  died,  which  she  did  before  the 
boy  was  through  with  college,  and  while  the  girl  was 
in  the  beginning  stages,  he  undertook  to  apply  his  prin 
ciples  in  person,  spasmodically,  violently,  in  intervals 
when  his  plunging  came  to  any  pause.  Wendell  Rudley 
regulates  everything  with  a  club,  in  a  sudden  way,  when 
he  happens  to  feel  expressive.  That  machine  brain  of 
his  doesn't  strike  like  a  clock.  Its  convulsions  come 
irregularly,  like  those  intermittent  seizures.  .  .  ." 

The  word  carried  me  back  to  that  night  of  "the  man 
with  the  glove." 

"Naturally  he  bedeviled  the  children.  He  couldn't 
break  their  spirit.  Children  of  such  a  mother  and  such 


188  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

a  father  are  not  easily  cowed.  They  might  be  battered, 
though  they  couldn't  readily  be  crushed  altogether. 
Humanity  is  astonishingly  resilient.  But  he  made  them 
hate  him.  If  he  had  gone  about  it  with  a  scientific 
system,  step  by  step,  with  attention  to  every  meticulous 
detail  of  the  business  of  creating  hatred,  he  couldn't 
have  succeeded  so  perfectly.  If  he  had  staked  every 
thing  on  the  chance  of  making  them  hate  him,  even  he, 
with  all  his  luck,  couldn't  have  won  with  more  ghastly 
completeness.  He  made  an  absolutely  perfect  job  of 
it.  I  can  assure  you  of  that. 

"He  lost  the  girl  first.  I  mean  that  she  was  the 
first  to  hate  him.  He  bullied  her  in  ways  that  were  all 
the  more  exasperating  because  he  didn't  stop  the  money. 
Somehow  I  fancy  that  is  distinctively  American.  About 
the  last  thing  an  American  father  will  do,  if  resources 
in  themselves  are  not  an  issue  with  him,  is  stop  the 
money.  Besides,  she  had  a  little  money  of  her  own — 
from  an  aunt — and  he  could  scarcely  have  used  the  money 
whip  over  her. 

"If  the  son  died  harder  it  was  because  he  had  more 
fight.  I  don't  mean  more  spirit.  I  mean  just  that — 
more  fight.  And  that  mental  struggle  between  father 
and  son  was  a  bitter  affair.  As  for  Robert,  his  father 
could  of  course  simply  have  chucked  him  out.  But  that 
was  not  his  way  of  winning.  It  would  have  been  like 
tossing  the  cards  on  the  floor.  He  wanted  Robert  in  his 
own  business.  Robert  wanted  engineering.  They  hag 
gled  and  bickered.  There  were  long  intervals  in  which 
the  father  was  absent  in  the  West.  During  these  times 
the  son  went  straight  forward  with  his  own  plans. 
Presently  he  was  at  his  technical  studies.  It  was  then, 
too,  that  he  began  gambling." 

Zorn  gave  me  a  look  as  if  in  curiosity  as  to  any  knowl 
edge  I  might  have  of  Rudley's  history. 

"He  told  me  about  that,"  I  said. 

"About  .      ." 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  189 

-    "About  the  gambling." 

"A  man  comes  naturally  by  his  father's  instincts," 
Zorn  went  on,  "but  if  he  has  the  living  example  of  his 
father's  excesses  then  excesses  of  the  same  sort  are  about 
the  last  things  he  has  a  right  to  excuse  himself  for.  I'm 
not  thinking  of  gambling  as  a  pleasure,  but  as  a  passion, 
a  mania.  You  may  say  that  Robert  might  not  have 
recognized  in  his  gambling  the  likeness  to  his  father's 
form  of  gambling.  You  may  say,  too,  that  if  he  had 
he  might  have  remarked  that  his  father  was  a  wonder 
ful  winner.  The  truth  is  that  he  didn't  do  much  think 
ing  about  it.  And  there  isn't  much  in  modern  life  to 
make  a  youngster  think  of  gambling  as  a  vice.  God 
knows  it's  one  of  our  most  familiar  indoor  sports.  But 
Robert  went  farther  than  any  social  madness.  He  be 
came  a  gambling-house  fanatic." 

"I  know,"  I  said.  The  story  was  not  gripping  me  at 
all,  though  Zorn's  flushed  earnestness  was  an  absorbing 
spectacle. 

Yet  he  brought  me  up  suddenly  by  his  next  bit  of  the 
narrative. 

"Then  came  the  encounter  with  the  beast  Waincrove." 

It  has  seemed  odd  to  me  that  I  didn't  guess  Zorn's 
progress  toward  that  fantastic  trip  to  the  Naugaway 
Valley. 

X 

Thus  I  happened  at  last  to  get  the  story  of  Rudley's 
home-town  catastrophe.  My  irritation  in  the  matter 
of  Rudley  had  the  effect  of  distorting  the  images  of 
an  entirely  plausible  tale;  so  that  one  image  and 
another  came  jerking  out  of  the  mess,  grotesquely  and 
as  if  the  thing  had  been  quite  different  from  the  simple 
cause-and-effect  affair  it  really  was.  At  this  moment 
it  is  to  me  a  jumble  from  which  Rudley  might  emerge 
as  very  heroic  and  superior  if  one  were  in  a  position  to 
take  this  incident  objectively. 


190  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Naturally  I  can't  quite  do  that.  I  could  watch  Zorn 
unfold  his  case,  fervidly — and  caustically,  when  that 
seemed  to  suit  him — yet  hold  back.  I  realize  now  that 
as  a  result  of  my  skepticism  there  are  one  or  two  links 
I  can't  find.  It  isn't  clear,  for  example,  just  how  Rud- 
ley  became  the  champion  of  Biff  Hannigan  in  this 
precious  row. 

Zorn  made  that  encounter  with  Waincrove  very  vivid. 
I  can  see  Robert  standing  before  that  arrogant  confrere 
of  the  elder  Rudley  and  urging,  with  much  too  little  of 
diplomacy,  the  withdrawal  of  the  threat  against  Hanni 
gan.  This  threat  was  based  on  an  accusation  that  in 
volved  Waincrove's  daughter,  with  how  much  serious 
ness  doesn't  matter.  Zorn  believes  that  an  enmity  to 
Biff's  father  had  much  to  do  with  the  sinister  vehemence 
of  the  threat.  The  elder  Hannigan  being  then  under  the 
first  attack  of  a  disease  that  finally  carried  him  off,  the 
indomitable  Biff  was  in  no  position  to  invite  an  open 
row.  Hence,  by  whatever  interior  logic,  Rudley's  inter 
cession.  Yet  the  very  need  of  silence  only  accelerated 
old  Waincrove's  animosity.  He  was  soon  shaking  his 
fist  in  Rudley's  face. 

This  much  Rudley  managed  to  bear  very  well.  But 
when  Waincrove,  berating  his  daughter's  reckless  pre 
tensions  to  independence,  slightingly  coupled  her  name 
with  that  of  Rudley's  sister,  Rudley  (with  Zorn's  post- 
facto  blessing)  lost  his  temper.  There  were  nasty  words, 
a  stroke  of  the  hand  by  Waincrove,  and  Rudley  felt 
obliged  to  knock  him  down. 

The  upshot  of  it  was  that  Waincrove  gave  it  out  the 
next  day  that  he  had  trounced  Rudley  for  insulting  his 
daughter. 

Malignity  like  that  would  consider  nothing.  Prob 
ably  it  never  considered  the  need  to  follow  the  thing 
through  with  Rudley's  father.  Certainly  it  ignored  the 
daughter  and  every  other  personal  consequence. 

That  Rudley  might  not  seem  too  absurd  a  fanatic 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  191 

Zorn  made  it  out  that  Hannigan's  champion  was  content 
to  laugh  at  the  first  whisper  of  the  story.  And  Zorn 
was  also  inclined  to  accept  a  theory  that  Hannigan  did 
not,  at  the  time,  appreciate  the  situation  in  which  Rud- 
ley  was  to  be  placed.  In  fact,  as  Zorn  admitted,  the 
whole  affair  actually  had  no  greater  dimensions  than 
a  village  squabble.  No  one  could  have  foreseen  the 
feeling  that  would  grow  from  this  poisoned  seed,  mostly 
because  no  one  could  have  foreseen  the  fostering  effect 
of  ugly  stories  about  Rudley's  gaming  exploits,  nor  how 
dramatically  Wendell  Rudley  was  to  co-operate  in  pitch 
ing  his  son  into  the  outer  muddle  of  things. 

"That  last  night  at  the  Rudley  place,"  said  Zorn, 
"must  have  been  bitter.  The  three  were  there — father, 
son,  and  daughter — the  daughter,  as  I  have  told  you, 
already  hating  the  father,  with  as  good  cause  as  I  suppose 
hatred  ever  could  have.  There  was  a  scene  of  the  blight 
ing  sort  which  Wendell  Rudley  ended  with  two  words, 
'  Get  out!' 

"This  was  to  the  son.  But  the  daughter  snatched 
them  up.  She  didn't  act  as  promptly  as  the  boy.  But 
she  went  away  a  week  or  so  later.  She  had  that  little 
money  of  her  own.  The  Waincrove  girl  went  with 
her." 

Zorn  gave  me  a  look  that  seemed  to  imply  that  I 
need  not  now  be  told  why  he  went  on  that  stealthy 
pilgrimage. 

**I  knew  Robert  would  be  going  away.  I  knew  what 
was  fermenting  in  him.  He  has  an  obstinate  streak. 
Very  likely  he  would  call  it  persistence.  Perhaps  ob 
stinacy  is  the  other  chap's  persistence.  When  he  cut 
me  short  on  the  question  of  clearing  up  this  thing  I  told 
him  just  how  devilishly  obstinate  I  thought  he  was. 
He  said,  as  to  the  whole  affair,  that  it  didn't  matter. 
He  meant  that  he  was  contemptuous.  So  far  as  that 
blathering  Waincrove  is  concerned,  it  was  contemptibly 
small.  But  it  did  something  to  Robert  all  the  same. 


192  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Catastrophes  are  big  or  little  by  their  reactions.  Men 
are  foolish  to  grin  and  bear.  A  good  howl  is  often  more 
potent  than  any  snickering  martyrdom.  He  knocked 
Waincrove  down  at  the  beginning.  He  should  have 
knocked  him  down  at  the  end,  Hannigan  or  no  Hanni- 
gan.  It  would  have  had  more  of  sheer  righteousness. 
But  no  ...  there  was  his  obstinacy  again.  You  can't 
budge  him  once  he  is  started  on  a  thing.  It  will  be  the 
same  in  France.  He'll  go  through  .  .  ." 

"I  believe  you,"  I  said,  blankly. 

"Of  course  that  Waincrove  foolishness  was  not  the 
cause  of  the  final  explosion  in  the  Rudley  household. 
But  it  was  the  occasion.  And  the  violence  at  home  had 
the  effect  outside  of  completing  the  vicious  circle.  It 
became  quite  clear  that  Robert  was  a  bad  lot.  And 
there  you  come  to  the  fact  that  accomplished  the  most 
hurt.  There  were  people  there  at  Brannington  by  whom 
Robert  set  great  store.  .  .  .  Particularly  there  were  two 
women  who  were  close  to  his  mother.  He  got  it  into 
his  head  that  they  had  joined  in  chucking  him.  He 
was  quite  emphatic  about  that  with  me  at  the  time  I 
wrung  a  thread  of  the  story  from  him. 

"Well" — Zorn  stood  up  and  managed  to  kindle  the 
remains  of  his  fat  cigar — "I'm  not  deluding  myself  into 
believing  that  you  will  understand,  but  I  made  up  my 
mind  to  do  something  that  might  send  him  off,  when 
he  did  go,  with  a  different  feeling.  He  had  cut  me  short 
with  very  little.  I  wanted  to  know.  And  I  got  what 
I  went  after." 

Zorn  shook  his  hands  close  to  my  face. 

"I  took  that  Waincrove  rascal  by  the  throat — very 
nearly.  The  odd  thing  is  that  it  wasn't  necessary. 
Not  at  all.  He  was  quite  meek — and  astonished — a 
stolid  brute  of  a  man.  It  was  enough  that  he  quite 
shamelessly  told  me  the  truth.  I  made  him  write  it 
down  and  sign  it.  After  he  had  done  it  the  fool  was 
less  meek — wondered,  I've  no  doubt,  whether  he  hadn't 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  193 

put  himself  in  for  trouble.  Some  day  I  shall  get  at 
Wendell  Rudley." 

It  may  have  been  a  sense  of  the  way  my  imagination 
followed  the  lines  of  this  possibility  that  induced  Zorn 
to  emphasize  the  declaration. 

"It  would  be  worth  a  lot  of  effort.  Not  for  anything 
that  would  happen  to  him.  But  it  would  do  me  good.'* 

"If  you  got  what  you  went  after,"  I  said,  reverting 
to  the  pilgrimage,  "you  saw  the  two  women  friends  of 
Rudley's  mother." 

"Not  both.  One  is  dead.  I  was  sorry  for  that. 
But  the  other  .  .  .  that  I  assure  you  was  worth  while. 
She  was  far  from  having  any  ill-feeling  toward  Robert. 
But  she  had  grieved  pitifully.  A  fine  woman,  yet  she 
deserved  a  little  shaming.  I  wasn't  sweet  with  her. 
I  showed  her  Waincrove's  scrawl.  I  told  her  what  the 
real  Robert  is.  She  said  she  wanted  to  write  to  him. 
I  have  forwarded  her  letter — with  mine  telling  him  of 
my  offenses.  As  you  may  know,  he  was  gone  when  I  got 
back — gone  to  participate  in  the  calamity  that  is  grow 
ing  bigger  every  minute." 

For  the  moment  I  was  looking  at  a  strangely  subdued 
Zorn.  This  made  it  less  astonishing  that  his  final  word 
should  have  been  what  it  was. 

"If  I  had  a  son  I  should  wish  that  son  to  be  like 
him." 

And  I  sat  there  like  a  stick,  swallowing  my  perplexi 
ties,  awed  and  confused  by  Zorn's  devotion,  groping  for 
some  reality  in  the  vanished  image  of  Robert  Rudley. 

It  was  a  relief  that  Zorn  issued  no  challenge.  My 
silence  was,  apparently,  without  offense.  Yet  I  felt  the 
need  to  speak,  even  if  I  couldn't  speak  of  Rudley  then. 
I  said  the  thing  that  had  just  come  into  my  mind. 

"That  is  the  first  time,  Mr.  Zorn,  I've  heard  you  ex 
press  anything  like  a  wish.  Maybe  you  will  let  me  trans 
late  my  feeling  into  a  question.  I  believe  every  man 
has  his  great  wish.  What  is  yours?" 


194  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Zorn  looked  at  me  suspiciously. 

"Why  do  you  ask  that?" 

"Let  me  answer  that  question  afterward,"  I  urged 
him.  "You  have  furnished  me  with  the  best  definition 
of  friendship  I  ever  saw  lived.  But  you  won't  care  to 
have  me  tell  you  that,  and  I'm  not  shifting  to  another 
subject,  though  my  question  might  sound  so.  I  guess 
the  thing  is  all  of  a  piece." 

"What  is  my  great  wish?"  Zorn  peered  at  me  with 
gathered  brows.  "It  sounds  foolish." 

It  might,  I  said,  if  he  thought  wishing  was  foolish. 

"But  no  man  has  a  single  wish." 

"May  he  not  have  a  greatest  wish — a  dominating 
wish,  a  supreme  longing?" 

Zorn  stroked  his  chin. 

"I  assume  that  you  mean  the  thing  that  in  most  people 
amounts  simply  to  an  itch." 

"You  believe  Rudley  has  more  than  an  itch?" 

"Perhaps.  I  don't  know.  I  haven't  philosophized 
about  it.  By  the  way,"  and  he  gave  me  that  fasten- 
you-to-the-chair  glance,  "what  is  the  subject  of  your 
book?" 

"The  title  may  suggest  it—The  Great  Desire." 

"I  understand.  That  is  very  interesting.  You're 
making  notes  of  me." 

"I'm  listening  and  thinking." 

"Admirable!  Maybe  the  modus  of  art  is  an  amplified 
railroad  warning:  Stop,  look,  listen — and  say." 

"Except  that  one  must  think  and  feel." 

Zorn's  eyes  roved  the  room.  "Seeing,  feeling,  ex 
pressing — when  art  rises  in  all  three  it  is  ripe,  isn't  it? 
That  is  a  pretty  good  definition  of  living  also.  Remem 
ber  that." 

I  told  him  of  meeting  a  newspaper  man  at  the  fra 
ternity  club  who  had  asked  a  hundred  people,  as  he 
met  them,  what  they  would  do  with  a  million,  and  had 
made  a  newspaper  story  of  the  answers.  Eighty-eight 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  195 

per  cent,  in  their  first  breath  had  spoken  of  travel.  The 
vast  majority  thus  showed  plainly  that  they  felt  tied — 
like  Alonzo.  To  break  loose — that  was  the  big  impulse. 
They  might  differ  in  their  way  of  coming  back.  In 
their  longing  for  liberty  they  were  impressively  alike. 

"The  desire  for  liberty."  Zorn  was  musing.  "It 
is  tremendously  pathetic.  For  of  course  it  grows  out 
of  a  delusion — that  delusion  of  being  tied." 

I  protested  that  roots  are  not  a  delusion. 

"In  a  man — yes.     He  carries  his  roots  with  him." 

"As  to  that,"  I  said,  "you  took  a  lot  of  trouble 
recently  to  show  that  it  hurts  to  pull  them  up." 

He  paused  for  a  moment  in  which  he  put  away  the 
last  of  the  cigar. 

"Maybe  I  have  been  rootless  for  too  long." 

And  I  didn't  get  the  master  wish. 


XI 

In  translating  Zorn's  narrative  to  Sarah  and  Aunt 
Paul  it  was  impossible  to  escape  a  feeling  of  dispropor 
tion  between  the  cause  and  the  effect.  Zorn  treated  the 
whole  affair  as  if  it  were  of  vast  importance.  Despite 
his  "catastrophes  are  big  or  little  by  their  reactions,"  he 
had  seemed  to  give  that  muddle  in  Brannington  the  di 
mensions  of  an  actual  tragedy.  Perhaps  it  was  because 
I  could  not  translate  it  with  the  same  flavor  that  the 
disparity  appeared.  Affection  has  its  own  yardstick, 
of  course,  and  one  has  to  remember  that  the  intrinsic 
in  a  happening  is  a  mere  theory.  It  is  its  effect  in  our 
minds  that  we  can  get  at.  We  are  all  a  good  deal  like 
the  politicians.  We  ask,  "What  is  there  in  this  for  me?" 
I  hope  most  of  us  go  farther.  Whether  we  do  or  not, 
we  can't  see  around  corners.  Each  must  see  from  his 
own  angle. 

Zorn  seemed  to  me  to  be  satisfied  with  a  single  line  of 
proof  about  Rudley.  He  is  ready,  evidently,  to  brush 


196  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

away  every  other  consideration — not  to  speak  of  any 
thing  that  might  be  altogether  aside  from  his  assump 
tion — such  as  a  Laura  Sherrick  affair,  for  example. 
The  short  of  it  is  that  he  thinks  he  knows  Rudley. 

I  remember  his  saying  one  day,  when  we  were  discuss 
ing  another  matter — though  he  may  have  been  thinking 
of  Rudley,  "Don't  consider  too  conclusively  a  thing  a 
man  does.  Consider  what  he  is." 

"But  what  he  does  is  part  of  what  he  is,"  I  expostu 
lated. 

"Ah,  yes! — a  part.  It  may  even  seem  to  be  that. 
But  it  is  not  him." 

"That  is  God's  game,"  I  persisted,  "to  know  what 
we  are.  How  are  we  to  know  men  except  by  what  they 
do — with  their  thoughts  or  with  their  hands?  It  might 
be  very  well  to  imitate  God,  to  try  to  get  through  and 
find  the  total  of  the  man.  I  can  understand  that  this 
might  be  not  only  scientific,  not  only  magnanimous,  but 
reassuring  in  a  vast  number  of  cases — " 

"Never  mind  the  science,"  said  Zorn,  sharply.  "The 
plain  fact  is  that  one  lie  doesn't  make  a  liar — one  blunder 
a  blunderer." 

I  held  out  for  the  point  that  a  man  only  needs  to  lean 
too  far  over  the  cliff  once — that  he  doesn't  need  to  make 
a  habit  of  it. 

"But  I'm  not  speaking  of  consequences,"  declared 
Zorn.  "  I'm  speaking  of  character.  Your  erudition  in  the 
matter  of  consequences  is  perfect.  Gravitation  is  re 
lentless — and  the  wretched  thing  is  that  social  gravita 
tion  is  just  as  relentless.  Character  is  another  matter. 
You  should  have  thought  of  that — " 

"But—" 

"I  know  all  you  are  going  to  say.  It  is  perfectly  good 
as  a  theory.  Christ  was  not  nailed  to  the  cross  for  what 
He  was,  but  for  what  He  said  and  did.  What  we  say 
and  do  is  what  connects  us  with  others.  Very  fine — but 
here's  the  proper  'but' — character  is  larger  than  con- 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  197 

duct,  and  it  is  not  exclusively  God's  job  to  read  beyond 
fragments  of  conduct  when  we  have  the  chance  to  do  so. 
A  man  is  not  like  a  chain.  He  is  as  strong  as  his  strong 
est  link  also.  The  consequences  of  a  weakness  may  be 
tremendous,  but  the  consequences  of  a  strength — in  the 
same  man — may  be  tremendous,  too.  Is  there  anything 
that  shines  out  of  history  more  clearly  than  that?"  .  .  , 

I  knew  he  was  right,  but  when  I  revert  to  that  plea  it 
is  hard  to  avoid  reading  in  it  his  personal  solicitude  for 
Rudley.  It  may  explain,  too,  his  fearfully  solemn  atti 
tude  toward  the  Brannington  incident. 

Nevertheless,  I  was  astonished  to  have  my  aunt  hear 
the  facts  with  evident  emotion.  I  couldn't  read  these 
emotions.  Her  one  exclamation  was  as  far  as  she  went 
in  words. 

"What  a  pity!" 

That  was  all.  Which  fact  was  a  pity  I  wasn't  in  the 
mood  to  ask.  Perhaps  she  feels  as  I  do,  that  poor 
Zorn's  elaborate  vindication  of  the  man  who  is  now 
across  the  sea  halts  rather  awkwardly.  That  is  a  pity. 

As  for  Sarah,  she  surprised  me  quite  as  much  by 
receiving  the  story  with  scarcely  a  sign  of  feeling,  though 
her  eyes  did  betray  that  trick  they  have  of  growing 
deep. 

"I  never  supposed  there  was  much  in  those  stories 
about  him,"  she  said,  in  that  level,  wise- woman  way. 
It  was  as  if  she  had  said  that  nothing  mattered  but  the 
One  Thing.  Well,  until  the  One  Thing  happened  we 
had  been,  all  of  us,  civil  enough  to  Rudley.  In  spite  of 
purely  theoretical  misgivings  I  had  gone  on  liking  him. 
And  Sarah  .  .  .  well,  who  knows  about  Sarah?  I  saw 
the  way  she  looked  at  him.  I  saw  the  way  she  looked 
when  she  closed  that  door.  I  watched  her  as  I  gave 
out  this  story  from  Zorn.  The  sum  is  to  be  guessed,  but 
knowing  about  Sarah  would  be  like  knowing  why  her 
lips  make  that  little  turn  when  she  doesn't  say  some 
thing  she  is  thinking. 

14 


198  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

I  came  back  to  Sarah  again  and  again  from  the  pages 
of  my  book,  as  if  I  must  somehow  get  to  the  matter  of 
the  Woman  secret  through  her.  Without  something  of 
the  woman  secret  how  is  one  to  reach  the  fundamentals? 
I  don't  mean  the  sex  secret — not  Sarah  as  a  female,  but 
as  a  woman.  Mere  sex  has  no  secrets  at  all.  It  has 
been  blabbing  since  biology  had  anything  to  go  on. 
Its  utmost  tokens  litter  the  earth.  The  mystery  of 
Woman,  on  the  contrary,  seems  to  escape  exposure 
even  by  her  own  best  efforts.  The  enigma  has  become 
so  trite  that  even  the  baffled  Other  Hah*  forgets  to  be 
keen  about  it  until  the  implements  of  philosophy  break 
their  edges  against  the  grit. 

Taking  Sarah  is  not  merely  a  matter  of  convenience. 
It  would  be  shameless  to  take  simply  the  handiest 
specimen.  In  that  view  I  might  have  accepted  my  aunt 
as  a  large,  mellowed,  richly  stratified  example.  I 
couldn't  feel  that  my  aunt  would  yield  satisfactory  re 
sults.  She  seems  divergent.  That  Successfully  Single 
notion  has  too  much  the  sound  of  a  third  sex.  No; 
Sarah  is  more  typical.  I'm  sure  she  might  marry.  That 
is  all  that  is  essential  to  establish  a  truly  typical  case. 

When  Sarah  asked  me  what  was  the  difference  between 
an  old  maid  and  a  girl  bachelor,  and  I  ventured  the  opin 
ion  that  an  old  maid  thinks  too  little  of  men  while  a 
girl  bachelor  thinks  too  much  of  herself,  I  had  in  mind 
a  definite  theory  about  which  I  am  not  flippant  at  all. 

The  theory  (I  took  occasion  to  remind  Sarah  that  it 
was,  I  suppose,  very  old)  is  this:  That  in  seeking  an 
understanding  of  men  and  women  the  short  cut  is  in 
looking  for  their  interests — in  searching,  like  the  judge, 
for  the  motive.  Self-interest  rather  than  sex  separates 
kinds  of  action  in  the  sexes.  There  are  polarities  and  all 
that  sort  of  thing  to  explain  mere  sex  attraction  and  re 
pulsion.  Science  may  figure  it  out  that  male  and  female 
considerations  are  very  simple.  But  man  and  woman 
^considerations  are  made  not  in  the  least  simple  by  the 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  199 

eternal  presence  of  this  self-interest  complexity.  Women 
look  at  things  differently  not  because  of  their  different 
sex,  but  because  of  the  different  interests  growing  out 
of  different  sex. 

Sarah  had  an  easy  way  of  not  being  involved  in  this. 

"What  of  it?"  she  said. 

"Why  have  scales,  or  a  foot-rule,  or  a  thermometer?" 
I  demanded.  "  We  need  measuring  principles.  Do  you 
admit  that?" 

"I  don't  see  the  sense  of  rushing  around  measuring 
things,"  she  said.  "I  think  you  measure  too  much. 
You  look  exactly  like  that  to  me  sometimes — like  a 
comic-page  professor  with  awful  spectacles,  a  foot-rule 
in  one  hand,  a  thermometer  in  the  other,  scales  sticking 
out  of  his  pocket,  and  glaring  feverishly  at  Life." 

We  both  laughed.  When  Sarah  alone  laughs  the  dis 
cussion  often  goes  on.  But  when  we  both  laugh  rea 
soning  is  at  an  end. 

And  when  we  both  laugh  Sarah's  laugh  always  looks 
good  to  me.  She  would  think  I  was  measuring  again  if 
I  said  so,  but  few  women  laugh  so  well  as  Sarah.  Not 
only  as  to  the  sound,  but  as  to  the  look  of  it.  I  haven't 
heard  Sarah  laugh  for  a  long  time. 


XII 

If  I  hadn't  seen  Felicia  in  the  afternoon,  on  the  street,  in 
broad  daylight,  it  might  in  some  ways  have  been  different. 
Not  changed  utterly,  of  course,  but  changed,  nevertheless. 

I  was  on  my  way  home,  and  had  just  turned  from  a 
glance  through  the  railings  of  the  Square  when  I  saw  her 
coming.  She  was  with  the  woman  whom  I  have  seen 
at  the  window. 

She  became  extraordinarily  vivid  in  an  instant.  Her 
face  shone  above  the  deep  brown-fur  collar  of  her  cloak 
with  a  curious  brightness — I  don't  mean  merely  anima 
tion,  though  it  had  a  wonderful  flash  of  that,  too — but 


200  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

a  radiance  of  sheer  color,  like  a  face  you  might  see 
lifted  in  a  dim  canvas  by  a  special  shaft  of  light.  It  oc 
curred  to  me  afterward  that  this  effect  might  have  re 
sulted  partly  from  the  fact  that  her  velvet  hat  had  no 
brim  to  cast  a  shadow  and  that  she  held  her  face  high, 
as  if  in  special  joy  of  the  air,  which  was  very  fine  to-day. 
Partly,  I  say.  These  things  could  not  altogether  ex 
plain  the  exquisitely  luminous  fairness  of  her  skin,  a 
color  which  you  could,  it  may  be,  find  in  certain  orchid 
petals  when  they  are  drenched  with  sky,  but  for  which 
there  is  no  possible  paint  or  word  in  the  world. 

When  we  neared  each  other  she  turned  her  head  so 
that  I  could  look  fully  into  her  eyes.  My  thought  in 
that  instant  was  that  she  was  measuring  me  at  close 
quarters,  and  I  tingled  as  if  some  deliciously  tenuous 
current  of  flame  had  pranced  through  my  body.  Her 
turning  her  head  was  so  sudden  and  so  unexpected,  and 
something  in  her  eyes  as  well  as  in  the  curve  of  her 
parted  lips  was  so  expressive  of  interest — as  if,  in  fact, 
she  had  said,  "This,  then,  is  the  one  who  looks  from  the 
window" — that  my  hand  (late  enough,  as  luck  would 
have  it)  mechanically  went  to  my  hat,  and  with  a  burn 
ing  face  I  realized  that  she  had  passed. 

Her  silhouette  was  still  visible  when  I  reached  my 
door.  She  is  not  tall,  but  a  pleasant  slenderness  gives 
her  all  the  grace  that  goes  with — with  pleasant  slender- 
ness.  In  the  retreating  flicker  of  her  there  was  the 
supreme  music  of  line. 

With  one  miracle  to  fuddle  me  I  might  have  been  bet 
ter  prepared  for  the  other.  But  even  an  ingenious 
imagination — one  of  those  imaginations  that  can  juggle 
with  bubbles  or  weave  patterns  with  lighting  and  the 
skin  of  mountains — would  scarcely  have  the  audacity  to 
drop  us  down  at  the  same  concert  on  the  same  evening. 
As  for  putting  us  side  by  side,  so  that  her  rolled-back 
furs  touched  my  shoulder — that,  as  a  piece  of  fantasy, 
would  have  been  absolutely  grotesque. 


QIANGED  HORIZONS  201 

Yet  there  she  was.  So  close  that  I  could  have  learned 
which  sort  of  perfume  she  preferred  if  she  had  preferred 
any.  There  was  no  perfume  save  that  emanation  too 
faint  for  naming  by  which  we  sense  a  delicious  presence. 
If  there  are  colors  no  eye  can  see,  and  sounds  no  ear  can 
hear,  it  is  fascinating  (as  I  can  testify)  to  strain  the 
sensory  attention  in  an  effort  to  verify  the  subtlety  of  a 
significant  odor.  There  was,  of  course,  the  furry  frag 
ment  of  a  wild  animal  that  touched  my  shoulder.  But 
there  was  also  a  whispered  odor  that  I  knew  was  of  her 
hair. 

Our  household  had  been  unanimous  in  going  to  hear 
the  symphony  orchestra.  My  aunt's  wisdom  in  the 
matter  of  music  makes  Sarah  and  me  look  illiterate. 
Her  presence  is  thus  a  happy  help  at  a  concert,  especially 
as  she  does  not  intrude  her  wisdom.  If,  as  in  my  case, 
one  cares  for  the  most  part  to  guess  meanings  or  inten 
tions  for  himself,  her  way  of  letting  others  alone  is  a 
good  trait.  If  one  wishes  to  ask,  "Who  was  Ambroise 
Thomas?"  she  is  not  too  encyclopedic.  And  of  course 
she  never  speaks  of  "nuances"  or  in  any  of  the  funny 
patter.  I  have  heard  her  analyze  "The  Ring"  in  real 
man-talk  that  had  a  Wagnerian  jolt  to  it. 

We  sat  with  my  aunt  in  the  middle,  so  that  Sarah  and 
I  might  have  her  like  a  book  between  us.  Two  seats 
on  the  aisle  remained  empty  beside  me  almost  up  to  the 
moment  when  the  conductor  took  his  place. 

Then  came  Felicia  and  her  mother — I'm  sure  she  is 
her  mother. 

The  realization  of  what  had  happened,  that  she  was 
there,  settling  down  immediately  beside  me  in  the  amber 
glow,  loosening  her  cloak,  and  producing  a  delicate  silken 
sound  that  had  a  thrilling  effect  of  intimate  nearness, 
bewildered  me  as  much  as  if  she  and  my  aunt  had  jointly 
held  some  guilty  secret  of  my  past  and  were  flanking 
my  resulting  discomfiture. 

I  did  feel  encompassed  by  a  situation.    No  doubt  the 


202  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

situation  impinged  more  acutely  because  it  was  built 
up  out  of  the  material  of  dreams. 

I  heard  her  speak  in  an  undertone  to  her  companion, 
a  contralto  undertone  that  was  like  her  color  made 
audible,  and  that  seemed  to  be  left  as  a  suspended  note 
when  the  click  of  the  baton  hushed  the  murmurs  of  the 
audience. 

I  shall  never  be  clear  as  to  those  first  numbers  of  the 
concert.  If  presence  colors  a  scene,  how  much  more 
does  it  color  sound?  When  that  first  gush  of  melody 
poured  into  the  space  I  knew  what  romance,  what  even 
a  whimsical  romantic  dream,  could  do  with  elemental 
sensation.  This  is  put  wrongly.  I  should  say  that  I 
was  placed  in  a  position  to  know,  for  I  analyzed  nothing 
at  all  while  I  sat  there  in  an  absurd  sensuous  stupor, 
taking  half-breaths  in  the  tensity  of  attention,  with  that 
corner-of-the-eye  image  looming  against  the  tapestries 
of  tone.  Every  instrument  picked  its  way  through  the 
mesh  of  sound  with  an  extraordinary  clearness  such  as 
I  never  remember  to  have  noticed  before,  as  of  fibers 
heightened  by  concentrated  light.  I  got  new  elfin 
notes  from  the  clarinets,  odd  voicelike  mutterings  from 
the  horns.  The  cymbals  brought  together  in  a  slanting 
softness  had  a  quality  like  iridescent  mosaic;  and  a 
phrase  from  the  harp  was  as  piercingly  clear  as  dripping 
gold  against  velvet. 

She  sat  very  still,  as  if  she  found  images  just  as  vivid. 
Her  gloves  came  together  in  a  quick  staccato  when  the 
applause  time  came,  and  I  caught  sight  of  something 
falling. 

I  knew  that  her  program  had  slipped  from  her  knees. 
It  was  at  my  feet.  I  picked  it  up. 

It  was  my  privilege  to  speak  to  her,  and  it  was  absurd 
that  I  should  be  frightened  by  the  privilege,  which,  now 
that  I  had  picked  up  the  thing,  had  become  a  compulsion. 
So  far  as  I  knew  she  was  waiting  in  that  queenly  way  of 
hers  to  see  how  I  should  do  it. 


CHANGED  HORIZONS  203 

"Your  program  ..."  I  said,  huskily,  with  the  leaves 
extended. 

And  she  ignored  me. 

Then,  at  the  end  of  perhaps  a  full  two  seconds,  the 
mother  stirred,  reached  over  to  take  my  offering,  and 
said,  "Thank  you!"  with  an  unmistakable  inflection  of 
apology. 

In  that  instant,  as  completely  as  if  it  had  been  said 
in  a  tone  of  thunder,  I  understood.  As  suddenly  it  be 
came  incredible  that  I  should  not  have  known  all  along 
that  Felicia  is  blind. 

At  once,  with  a  burning  obviousness,  the  face  at  the 
window,  feeling  for  the  light,  had  been  a  blind  face. 
At  once  the  face  that  lifted  from  the  tonneau  of  the  car, 
the  face  that  turned  at  the  sound  of  the  step  there  by 
the  railings  of  the  Square,  had  been  a  blind  face,  and 
that  sheltering  touch  of  the  mother  had  been  the  most 
eloquent  gesture  that  ever  went  unread. 

It  was  not  as  if  every  light  in  the  hall  had  gone  out. 
Rather  it  was  as  if  a  million  lights  had  been  suddenly 
turned  on,  flooding  with  a  fearful  radiance  the  pathos 
of  a  fact. 

I  was  seized  by  an  intense  longing  to  look  at  her  eyes, 
and  it  was  strange  to  find  that  this  became  more  defi 
nitely  impossible  than  if  she  could  see  me  do  it. 

And  the  orchestra  began  the  "Unfinished  Sym 
phony/'  .  .  . 

Listening  beside  her,  I  caught  every  throb  of  the  music 
with  an  emotion  of  awe.  I  closed  my  eyes  to  feel  the 
unobscured  sound.  .  .  .  Unobscured.  With  eyes  closed, 
it  was  unobscured.  The  mottled  field  of  hats,  the  cut 
of  the  director's  coat,  the  quaint  baldness  of  the  man 
holding  the  oboe,  all  became  less  than  of  no  consequence. 
With  the  scene  shut  out  the  pure  loveliness  of  the  tone 
poem  floated  free  like  pageantry  of  the  sky.  It  was  no 
longer  the  image  of  a  tapestry,  but  of  a  firmament.  .  .  . 

I  came  back  to  us  there  in  a  row — to  Sarah  with  her 


204  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

long,  curved  lashes  close  together;  to  my  aunt  looking 
like  a  comfortable  cultured  rounder;  to  Felicia  with  her 
fingers  laced;  to  myself  with  legs  asleep  in  the  stress. 

Inevitably  I  fell  to  thinking  how  that  none  of  these 
signs  meant  anything  to  Felicia.  .  .  . 

Physical  infirmities,  for  example,  so  long  as  they  do 
not  approach  her,  will  mean  no  tax  upon  sympathy. 
She  need  be  sorry  only  for  adversities  she  hears. 

She  will  never  know  how  a  blinded  soldier  looks. 

Yes,  Felicia,  you  will  not  see  the  ghastly  black  letters 
in  the  papers  informing  us  that  the  United  States  of 
America  is  going  to  war. 

I  hope  they  will  tell  you  of  this  in  some  soft  way. 
Be  glad  that  you  are  far  from  that  symphony  of  the  guns. 
Be  glad  that  you  can  go  on,  as  it  seems  you  may,  build 
ing  a  world  as  it  ought  to  be. 


PART    FIVE 

The  Bugle 


"AND  yet,"  said  my  aunt,  "this  war  plunge  some- 
7\  how  seems  terribly  sudden." 
/ V  "If  you  had  been  courted  violently  for  the 
same  length  of  time,"  I  suggested,  "y°u  would  say  the 
same  thing  when  the  man  came  to  the  point.  War 
could  hardly  have  come  less  suddenly." 

"I  know.     Yet  it  does  seem  sudden." 

There  can  be  no  question  about  the  thrill  of  the 
decision. 

That  cloud  was  a  long  time  rising  and  spreading. 
The  thunder  rumbled  as  of  something  at  a  great  distance 
that  might  dissolve  and  blow  itself  out  of  the  blue. 
Then  the  sky  darkened  and  the  bolt  fell.  And  we  looked 
at  one  another  in  a  kind  of  sheepish  excitement. 

We  have  known  the  war  as  something  in  type.  For 
us  the  men  who  have  died  have  died  in  print,  and  in 
print  we  have  now  gone  to  war. 

The  word  "war"  still  has  an  amazing  unreality.  We 
have  had  the  type  thrill,  but  we  have  heard  no  sound 
of  real  war,  nor  seen  a  splash  of  its  blood.  It  is  a  name, 
a  mirage,  as  remote  as  heaven — or  hell. 

If  there  is  such  a  thing  as  American  idealism  we  shall 
be  able  to  test  it  splendidly,  for  the  war  is  so  far  away 
that  we  cannot  be  jostled  into  it.  We  must  go  de 
liberately  to  find  it.  If  we  are  to  fight  with  anger  we 
shall  have  to  keep  angry  for  a  long  time.  If  we  are  to 
have  a  holy  zeal  we  shall  be  obliged,  like  the  Crusaders, 


206  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

to  nurse  our  divine  flame  through  long  spaces  that  may 
not  be  leaped  even  by  a  conquering  enthusiasm. 

It  is  to  be  America's  "show  down."  The  precocious- 
child  among  the  nations,  proud  of  his  bulk,  prodigal  in 
dreams,  stirred  with  shrewd  ambitions,  absorbed  in 
prodigious  games,  is  confronted  by  a  man's  job. 

We  are  to  find  out  what  we  are  made  of — literally. 
We  are  to  find  out  what  the  melting-pot  really  has  done. 
We  are  to  find  out  how  American  patriotism  defines  it 
self,  how  it  views  its  obligations  to  America  and  to 
the  community  of  the  world. 

We  are  to  find  out  how  the  men  and  women  members  of 
the  club  we  call  the  United  States  feel  about  a  danger  call. 

We  are  to  find  out  what  flags  and  national  hymns  have 
been  meaning  to  the  individual  heart. 

We  are  to  have  a  new  Who's  Who  in  America. 

In  the  glare  of  the  test  we  shall  realize  the  staggering 
difference  between  talking  and  doing.  We  shall  realize 
the  difference  between  printed  unity  and  action  unity, 
between  literary  patriotism  and  sacrifice  that  is  ready 
for  the  grime. 

We  shall  cheer  and  be  sickened,  and  cheer  again.  We 
shall  feel  toward  some  of  our  own  people  an  anger 
deeper  than  any  that  may  be  felt  toward  the  enemy. 
We  shall  eat  the  bitter  bread  of  disenchantment  and 
grow  a  faith  in  real  things. 

We  shall  emerge  begrimed  and  purified. 

The  nation's  Great  Desire  may  then  shine  clearer. 

We  shall  perhaps  find  out  whether  a  nation  may  be 
said  to  have  a  desire  .  . .  whether  a  nation  is,  indeed,  not 
a  gigantic  illusion,  an  artifice  unified  only  in  a  state  of 
inertia. 

We  surely  shall  find  that  a  nation  is  but  a  bunch  of 
human  souls,  most  of  them  incapable  of  a  coherent 
dream.  .  .  .  Life  has  made  them  distrustful  of  dreams 
.  .  .  and  with  but  one  clearly  recognizable  mass-wish, 
the  wish  to  get  that  which  the  mass  holds  back. 


THE  BUGLE  207 

u 

Suddenly  the  city  is  full  of  flags.  At  least  that  would 
be  a  way  of  saying  it.  In  every  street  there  is  the  sign. 
Big  flags,  pompous,  swaggering  flags,  and  little,  shabby 
flags,  some  of  them  to  be  suspected  of  not  standing  by 
their  colors  in  the  wet.  But  there  is  not  a  flag  for  every 
family,  nor  even  for  every  house.  It  is  not  to  be  ex 
pected.  There  are  not  enough.  Men  go  from  shop  to 
shop  begging  for  flags.  Flag-makers  are  bewildered. 
Women  sew  through  the  nights  putting  together  stars 
and  stripes.  Yet  there  is  not  enough.  Probably  all  the 
flags  of  all  the  peoples  in  the  world  would  not  be  enough. 

There  is  a  flag  out  of  our  window — the  middle  one. 
My  aunt  had  it  neatly  folded  from  its  last  outing  on 
Washington's  Birthday,  when  it  was  strung  flat  against 
the  house.  Yesterday  she  commissioned  me  to  get  a 
bracket  and  pole,  so  that  now  it  floats  free. 

There  is  a  flag  from  Felicia's  window,  an  intensely 
new  one,  with  stripes  very  brightly  crimson,  as  if  to 
insist  even  to  her  blind  eyes  that  the  stripes  must  be 
seen. 

Pietro  has  the  Italian  and  American  flag  X-d  over  his 
shine-booth. 

Old  Drynd  has  found  a  way  of  hanging  a  British  Union 
Jack  in  company  with  our  emblem  on  a  string  stretched 
beyond  the  dusty  window  of  his  shop. 

Hortense,  the  French  laundress  near  the  other  corner 
(she  has  a  solemn  husband  who  wears  a  skull-cap),  has 
brought  about  a  prim  partnership  with  the  Tricolor. 
It  is  as  if  the  two  flags  had  been  ironed  against  the 
window. 

And  the  German  saloon  half  a  block  beyond  Madame 
Hortense  has  a  large  American  flag  quite  by  itself.  The 
hem  of  the  flag  trails  over  a  statuette  of  a  fat  gnome 
straddling  a  barrel  and  holding  aloft  a  dripping  tankard. 

There  will  be  thousands  upon  thousands  of  buildings 


208  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

that  will  never  have  a  flag.  As  there  will  be  some  of  us 
who  will  think  we  can  have  a  war  by  hanging  out  a 
flag,  there  will  be  others  of  us  who  will  think  we  can 
refuse  war  by  omitting  the  emblem.  Largely,  of  course, 
the  absent  flag  will  mean  plain  indifference.  And  it  may 
be  that  an  absolutely  logical  reiteration  would  be  absurd 
...  as  if  everybody  were  to  go  about  singing  "  The  Star- 
spangled  Banner." 

We  shall  have  to  go  farther  than  the  emblems.  To 
night  the  scarlet  note  of  a  bugle  stirred  echoes  in  the 
street.  A  line  of  youngsters  drilled  for  an  hour,  swinging 
and  stamping,  and  backing  out  of  the  way  of  passing 
automobiles.  A  grizzled  White-wings  man  with  his 
street  broom,  wearing  the  only  uniform  in  sight,  stood 
long  in  study  of  the  clumsy  maneuvers.  There  were 
other  groups  in  other  streets,  sometimes  with  fife  and 
drum.  There  is  a  marching  throb  with  a  suggestion 
of  k<rag"  in  it.  Proclamations  hang  in  the  shops. 
The  President  proclaims  and  the  Mayor  proclaims.  We 
are  to  be  good  citizens  of  the  Republic.  Those  of  us 
who  are  not  citizens  are  to  be  circumspect,  on  penalty. 

There  will  be  a  great  army.  The  great  army  will  go 
across  the  sea. 

This  great  army  the  manhood  of  the  country  is  urged 
to  join — the  young  manhood  of  the  country.  As  if  the 
nation  had  hung  out  the  sign,  "Boys  Wanted.'* 

Hitherto  the  nation  has  asked  only  that  we  obey  the 
rules  of  the  club  and  once  a  year  drop  in  a  box  a  piece 
of  paper  expressing  an  opinion  as  to  how  the  club  should 
be  run. 

Now,  at  a  stroke,  a  vastly  urgent  need  for  another 
kind  of  membership  has  become  blazingly  plain.  The 
club  asks  us  to  become  active  members — to  do  some 
thing.  And  for  this  something  which  we  are  to  do  an 
opinion  and  a  piece  of  paper  are  not  enough. 

We  are  asked  to  give  not  our  opinion-manhood,  but 


THE  BUGLE  209 

our  body -manhood.  The  monster  who  is  running  amuck 
cannot  be  stopped  by  pieces  of  paper.  There  is  no 
alternative. 

Our  opinion-manhood  might  be  a  pretty  cheap  affair 
and  get  no  rebuke  save  in  a  sense  of  the  results.  Our 
body-manhood,  however,  is  to  be  looked  at  a  second 
time.  This  must  be  real.  There  are  ways  of  testing 
it.  It  is  subject  to  weighing  and  measuring. 

A  man  arguing  in  a  group  before  a  recruiting  station 
last  night  spat  it  out  harshly  and  honestly.  "Every 
one  of  you  that  is  the  size  of  a  man  ..." 


ill 

The  size  of  a  man! 

There  hare  been  literacy  tests,  all  sorts  of  tests  by 
which  those  of  us  who  are  defective  in  the  head  may 
be  set  apart  in  an  orderly  way.  Tests  of  the  body  have 
been  standardized  with  still  more  exacting  precision. 

One  must,  in  fact,  first  be  the  size  of  a  man.  The 
inches  of  height  have  a  fixed  minimum.  When  I  asked 
the  sergeant  at  the  recruiting  station  he  confirmed  this 
fact  with  an  awkward,  uncomfortable  glance  that  did 
credit  to  his  sympathies. 

"Why  are  they  afraid  of  little  men?"  I  asked  the 
sergeant. 

"  Well,  you  see  .  .  .  there  is  the  line,  and  the  equipment, 
and  .  .  ." 

"And  the  rifles?" 

"Yes." 

"And  everything  has  to  be  interchangeable?" 

"Yes." 

"Of  course.  You  couldn't  have  different  sizes  of  rifle." 

"There  is  this,  too,"  urged  the  sergeant.  "Of  course 
they  have  to  step  together  and  all  that.  And  there  is 
another  thing  .  .  ."  He  eyed  me  as  if  to  decide  whether 
he  might  mention  this.  I  held  him  to  it.  "There  is 


210  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

this,  you  know.  If  there  is  anything  about  a  man 
like—" 

"Like  being  a  hunchback." 

He  winced  as  if  I  had  prodded  him  with  something 
sharp. 

"I  mean,  like  his  being  very  short,  very  short,  you 
understand;  it  makes  him  stand  out.  Makes  it  dis 
agreeable  for  him,  men  bein'  the  way  they  are." 

"I  see,"  said  I.  "They  would  have  too  much  fun 
with  him." 

"I  guess  they  would,"  said  the  sergeant. 

"And  yet,"  I  said,  "short  men  have  done  well  in  war. 
There  was  Alexander  the  Great,  and  Caesar,  and  Na 
poleon,  and  Nelson,  and  Grant,  and  Lord  Roberts, 
and  Funston,  and  a  lot  more.  ..." 

The  sergeant  probably  did  not  gather  much  of  this, 
for  he  was  looking  over  my  head  with  an  uneasy  glitter 
in  his  eye. 

When  I  heard  a  muttered  "Wants  to  enlist!"  I  turned 
far  enough  to  see  a  watching  group  of  boys  and  men. 

"That's  what  you  mean,"  I  said  to  the  sergeant,  in 
dicating  the  group. 

He  nodded. 

"Even  if  they  were  always  sorry  for  him  it  would  be 
a  nuisance,  wouldn't  it?" 

"And  it's  a  damned  tough  game,  you  must  remem 
ber,"  declared  the  sergeant.  "A  hell  of  a  hard  game. 
Bein'  six  foot  doesn't  put  you  in  it.  That's  what  lots 
of  them  are  finding  out.  They're  rejecting  them  right 
and  left.  Flat  feet,  and  bum  eyes,  and  weak  hearts, 
and  all  that.  Men  that  couldn't  stand  it.  Only  be  in 
the  way.  They  chucked  out  a  fellow  last  night  that 
looked  good  for  a  traffic  cop." 

He  emphasized  the  unavailable  six-footers  with  a 
easily  discernable  intention. 

Yet  I  knew  he  was  quite  truthful.  We  begin  our  war 
drama  by  discovering  the  rarity  of  the  physically  fit. 


THE  BUGLE  211 

Being  a  soldier  is  more  complicated  than  being  a 
traffic  cop  ...  or  even  an  alderman. 

War  ends  with  cripples.  It  can't  afford  to  begin  with 
them. 

I  remember  a  morbid  time  when  I  traced  the  history 
of  famous  marked  men.  It  began  with  the  discovery 
that  dear  old  Epictetus  was  a  hunchback.  I  found  a 
somber  joy  in  the  triumphs,  or  at  least  in  the  force,  of 
these  afflicted  heroes.  Pope's  hump  may  have  injected 
an  acidulous  vein  into  his  philosophy,  but  he  did 
take  British  literature  by  the  throat.  If  Byron's  club 
foot  bred  in  him  envious  sarcasms  about  dancing,  it  did 
not  deter  him  from  hurling  himself  into  the  fight  for 
Greek  independence.  The  darkness  that  lost  Milton 
the  chance  to  be  a  soldier  was  soon  alive  with  the  most 
impressive  swarm  of  souls  ever  pictured  by  the  human 
imagination.  Yes,  the  twisted,  the  halt,  and  the  blind 
have  smashed  their  way  through  to  the  forefront  of  the 
world. 

I  am  glad  to  think  that  I  haven't  made  a  habit  of 
such  speculation.  I  read  The  Hunchback  of  Notre  Dame. 
I  grieved  over  Lanciotte,  and  shuddered  at  the  fate  of 
that  poor  buffoon  of  the  Sultan  of  Kashgar.  This  was 
inevitable  in  a  boy  who  ravened  over  books.  Mostly, 
as  I  intimated  to  Zorn,  I  have  not  thought  of  such 
things. 

Nevertheless,  it  becomes  a  lie  to  say  that  war  is  now 
a  matter  of  brains  and  machinery.  I  suspect  that  it  is 
as  much  a  matter  of  men  as  ever  it  was. 

I  am  strong,  I  can  shoot.  I  could  drive  a  tank. 
But  the  die-cut  system  is  in  the  way.  There  is  no  chance 
to  challenge  the  Goliath.  The  tape-measure  men  will 
go  to  the  front. 

Why  should  there  not  be  a  dwarf  army? — an  army  of 
discards — self-sustaining  discards,  not  weaklings? — an 
army  of  originals,  fitted  out  with  shorter  guns,  if  need  be? 

A  bantam  brigade. 


212  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

The  comic  artists  would  chortle,  but  history  has  told 
tales  that  might  make  the  scheme  something  more  than 
amusing. 

Good  God!  War  reeks  with  ironies — ironies  that  be 
long  to  peoples  and  systems.  War  itself  is  the  supreme 
irony,  the  ultimate  Bleeding  Joke.  To  elect  peace  the 
vote  of  nations  must  be  unanimous.  One  Prussian  black 
ball  sends  the  world  into  convulsions — as  one  beast  in 
a  crowd  can  upset  the  nicest  ideals  of  deportment. 
But  with  nations,  thrashing  the  beast  has  a  formula. 
Men  must  go  and  come  by  formula.  They  must  be 
fitted  together  by  formula.  So  that  size  and  shape  are 
not  arbitrary  elements  of  requirement.  There  is  neces 
sity.  The  real  machine  is  the  mass  of  men. 

It  is  all  wonderfully  logical. 


IV 

A  sense  of  something  that  is  happening  to  the  city,  in 
common  with  so  many  thousands  of  other  cities,  took 
me  to  our  roof  last  night,  and  thereby  to  an  adventure. 

Our  roof  has  but  a  hillock  height  in  the  architectural 
mountain  chain,  but  it  is  not  one  of  the  dwarf  roofs. 
It  belongs  to  the  physically  fit. 

One  can  forgive  a  city  from  its  roofs.  Particularly  at 
night.  There  is  something  pathetic  as  well  as  splendid 
in  the  heave  of  its  lines,  a  silencing  sadness  in  the  effect 
of  concealed  struggle  ...  of  life  unconscious  of  the 
turned  key.  The  dumb  look  of  roofs  spreads  a  kind  of 
visible  stillness  over  the  incrustation  and  removes  to 
an  immense  distance  the  abated  murmurs  of  the  streets 
. . .  streets  stretching  to  the  night's  horizon  and  marked 
out  theatrically  in  slantings  of  light. 

I  never  before  had  realized  the  amazing  fantasy  that 
might  lurk  in  light,  in  grotesque  spatterings  of  it,  in  pale 
shafts  of  it  flicking  over  the  huddled  shoulders  of  steel 
and  stone,  in  a  mysterious  veiled  glitter  as  of  half -closed 


THE  BUGLE  213 

eyes  in  a  darkened  face.  The  great  towers,  some  of  them 
flashing  in  a  reflected  fire,  stood  sharply  above  the  flow 
ing  blackness,  and  bubbles  of  light  trailed  northward 
like  a  phosphorescent  wake. 

Millions  of  windows.  .  .  .  One  might  stand  the  night 
through,  arm  in  arm  with  a  chimney-pot,  wondering 
why  one  window  in  a  tower  remains  lighted  while  all 
the  others  are  dark,  and  be  particularly  curious  when 
the  one  window  is  very  high,  say  in  the  twenty-second 
story  .  .  .  staring  steadily  into  the  night.  It  might  be 
of  some  little  all-night  print-shop  in  which  a  man  wearing 
spectacles  and  a  green  eye-shade  is  juggling  with  lead 
over  an  oily  composing-table.  It  might  mark  the  crib 
of  a  jaded  shipping-clerk  packing  mechanical  dolls  or 
pearl  buttons  or  insomnia  pellets  for  a  midnight-express 
car.  It  might  carry  the  glow  of  a  lamp  under  which  a 
triangular  group  of  German  spies  is  laboring  over  a 
code  message.  It  might  look  out  from  a  janitor's  apart 
ment  where  there  is  a  baby  whimpering  in  a  fever.  It 
might  label  the  whereabouts  of  a  bald-headed  man 
droning  to  a  sleepy,  taffy-haired  stenographer,  acutely 
conscious  that  the  steam  has  been  shut  off,  and  tem 
peramentally  skeptical  as  to  rewards.  There  might  be 
a  boy  up  there,  beside  a  telephone,  deep  in  a  cow-boy 
thriller,  waiting,  with  one  foot  on  a  grip  or  a  bundle, 
for  some  hurried  command  over  the  wire.  There  might 
be  an  Englishman  who  is  going  home  to  enlist,  sailing 
on  a  ship  that  gets  away  to-morrow,  and  nervously  tying 
up  the  last  of  the  severed  arteries  of  his  business  life. 
Or  there  might  be  a  cashier  with  twitching  lips  and  fur 
rows  in  his  forehead,  secretly  back  at  his  post,  striding 
the  floor,  sitting  before  open  books  in  long,  hard  silence, 
then  walking  at  last  to  the  window,  where  he  could  see 
the  shimmering  panorama  from  river  to  river,  and  won 
der  whether  it  is  true  that  you  lose  consciousness  before 
finishing  such  a  fall  to  the  street.  .  .  . 

Over  there,  across  the  way,  obscured  now  by  the  high 
15 


214  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

front  of  the  parapet,  would  be  the  windows  of  Felicia's 
rooms,  shining  with  a  special  softness  and  warmth. 
Behind  hundreds  of  thousands  of  windows,  all  the  way 
from  the  Battery  to  the  region  of  the  long-defunct 
Monsieur  Bronc's  farm,  there  would  be  Felicias,  not  one 
of  them,  perhaps,  at  this  moment  thinking  of  the  stars. 
Certainly  a  good  many  of  them  would  be  in  hall  bed 
rooms  staring  at  ugly  wall-paper  .  .  .  with  half-finished 
repairs  on  the  heels  of  silk  stockings.  .  .  .  An  immense 
number  of  them  must  be  lonesome.  Lonesome!  A 
huge  joke  this  lonesomeness  of  men  and  women,  all 
wanting,  stupidly  or  eagerly,  something  the  opposite 
of  lonesomeness  .  .  .  starving  in  the  midst  of  plenty, 
or  nursing  lonesomely  the  results  of  unsuccessful  re 
bellion.  The  city  is  a  great  blunderer;  lavishly  assem 
bling  the  elements  of  life,  heaping  up  fuel  for  the  sacred 
fire  and  neglecting  the  spark;  filing  the  documents  for 
endless  prodigies  of  romance,  and  losing  the  index; 
building  a  highway  of  Life  that  turns  out  to  be  a  laby 
rinth  ...  or  a  crystal  maze  in  which  you  are  eternally 
meeting  yourself.  .  .  . 

And  now  from  over  the  cliff  came  a  burst  of  ragtime 
music  with  a  banjo  in  it.  I  fancied  that  some  windows 
near  at  hand  had  been  opened  perhaps  to  let  out  the 
smoke.  Laughter  and  a  deep  voice  with  a  chuckling 
vibration  sounded  suddenly  near,  then  were  muffled. 

The  roof  adjoining  on  the  east  is  lower  by  seven  or 
eight  feet.  On  the  west  the  neighbor  roof  is  still  farther 
below.  I  noticed  this  with  a  feeling  of  being  lifted  and 
of  being  more  alone.  I  looked  up  at  the  sky,  which,  like 
an  appalling  indigo  mirror,  seemed  to  be  reflecting  in  fit 
ful  iterations  the  piecing  sparkles  of  the  city  beneath 
.  .  .  until  its  glory  had  time  to  shrivel  such  an  image, 
to  make  a  spectator,  even  an  elated  and  uplifted  spec 
tator,  diminish  like  a  light-flooded  iris.  .  .  . 

And  then  I  had  the  feeling  of  not  being  alone.  The 
idea  was  incredible  enough  to  make  speculation  rather 


THE  BUGLE  215 

exciting.  When  I  turned  about,  crunching  the  gravel 
under  my  feet,  I  wondered  whether  I  really  had  heard  a 
fainter  iteration  of  that  sound,  or  merely  felt  the  mental 
echo. 

I  walked  to  the  middle  of  the  roof,  stepped  upon  a 
wooden  runway,  noting  the  chimneys  one  by  one,  the 
vent-pipes  and  other  silhouettes  of  the  foreground. 

Evidently,  I  thought,  it  is  an  illusion  natural  to  such 
an  imaginative  excursion.  For  the  moment  even  the 
rumble  of  elevated  trains  and  the  bleating  of  auto- 
horns  seemed  to  fade  out  of  the  remote  orchestration. 
I  suppose  my  intensity  had  something  to  do  with  the 
effect  of  a  sudden,  astonishing  silence. 

When  I  saw  the  man  he  was  directly  in  front  of  me, 
standing  on  the  runway.  I  had  reason  to  find  some 
thing  phantasmal  in  the  look  of  him,  even  if  a  lycan- 
thropy  of  my  own  had  not  invested  him  with  the  form 
of  a  beast. 

It  came  in  one  of  those  queer  flashes  so  hard  to  ex 
plain — they  are  too  quick  for  reason — that  he  had 
climbed  from  the  easterly  roof.  I  am  sure  that  I  didn't 
figure  out  that  he  couldn't  have  come  up  by  the  roof 
stairway  as  I  did,  without  my  knowing  it,  though  I 
afterward  realized  that  this  was  a  fact.  I  should  cer 
tainly  have  seen  him  reach  the  roof  by  the  stairway, 
for  the  partly  open  metal  door  showed  a  faint  light 
from  the  landing  below,  and  his  figure  against  this 
opening  would  have  marked  itself  clearly. 

"  Where  did  you  come  from?" 

Itwas  inevitable  that  I  should  ask  this  question.  I  had 
thought  it,  and  there  was  a  blank  that  had  to  be  filled. 

He  neither  moved  nor  answered  for  a  moment,  and 
in  that  interval  I  made  out  that  he  was  youngish,  with 
a  smooth,  sharp-featured  face;  that  he  wore  a  light- 
colored  overcoat. 

Then  he  answered:  "None  of  your  damned  business. 
Get  out  of  m'  way!" 


216  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Your  way.  .  .  .?" 

I  was,  it  seemed,  blocking  his  path  to  the  door,  which 
had  not  occurred  to  me.  To  open  that  path  at  once 
assumed  the  character  of  participation  in  whatever  game 
he  was  playing.  His  way  of  putting  the  thing  certainly 
hadn't  colored  the  enterprise  very  happily. 

"You  little  monkey  ...  I  tell  you  to  get  out  of  m'  way, 
or,  by  Jesus  .  .  ." 

At  this  I  caught  the  shine  of  the  revolver,  not  leveled 
as  I  once  fancied  such  a  matter,  but  much  more  simply, 
with  only  a  slightly  raised  hand,  and  promising  a  bullet 
somewhere  in  the  region  of  my  breastbone. 

No  one,  I  am  sure,  could  have  for  unwelcome  physi 
cal  contact  a  greater  abhorrence  than  I,  yet  no  hunch 
back,  I  am  equally  sure,  has  ever  been  able  to  avoid 
speculation  upon  the  question  of  his  possible  adjust 
ment  to  conflict.  Moreover,  my  thought  had  been  full 
of  the  war,  and  of  the  great  finger  it  had  thrust  at  me. 

I  had  a  theory  about  myself.  It  grew  up  in  the  feel 
of  my  long  arms  and  in  a  confidence  I  have  always  had 
about  my  hands.  .  .  . 

I  had  known  just  how  I  should  do  that  which  I  did 
do  in  the  instant  after  the  insult  and  the  oath.  It  is 
foolish  to  contend  that  in  an  emergency  one  never  acts 
as  he  expected  he  would.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  a 
formula  that  leaps  to  the  case.  I  proved  it.  I  knew 
(that  Jap  professor  had  labored  long  to  make  it  clear) 
precisely  how  I  should  catch  his  wrist.  The  crack  of 
the  bones  sounded  precisely  as  I  knew  it  would  .  .  . 
a  miserable  sound,  but  signaling  the  success  of  the  func 
tion  performed. 

The  revolver  fell  between  my  feet,  clattering  into  the 
gravel. 

And  we  stood  there,  after  his  guttural  shriek,  in  a 
slightly  changed  position,  the  faint  light  from  the  door 
striping  the  length  of  him.  His  look  was  a  disagreeable 
thing  to  see  .  .  .  with  the  hand  dangling. 


THE  BUGLE  217 

Then  he  was  at  the  door,  leaping,  as  it  seemed,  the 
whole  flight  of  steps — in  a  flash,  without  a  word. 

I  caught  up  the  revolver  and  automatically  swung 
about  to  reach  the  door,  opening  my  mouth  to  shout, 
piercingly  incited  by  an  impulse  to  leap  after  him. 

Instead  I  sat  down  on  the  top  step  with  a  nausea. 

One  may  have  a  formula,  yet  not  be  accustomed  to 
some  things. 


In  a  moment  I  had  fastened  the  door  and  was  stum 
bling  down  the  steps.  There  was  no  formula  for  this 
situation.  Yelling  down  the  elevator  shaft  would  have 
doubtful,  perhaps  dangerous,  results.  The  man  would 
get  out.  Our  own  accounts  were  squared.  Injury  to 
that  brown  optimist,  Randolph — if  it  was  Randolph 
and  not  Alonzo — would  be  an  unpleasant  thing  to  have 
on  the  conscience.  The  man  was,  undoubtedly,  a  crook. 
That  entailed  certain  obligations.  But  I  knew  nothing 
of  his  offenses. 

I  kept  on,  flight  after  flight,  turning  the  situation  in 
my  mind.  Randolph  introduced  a  trite  variation  on  a 
traditional  calamity.  He  was  asleep  at  the  switchboard. 
I  was  glad  of  it,  though  I  awakened  him  and  asked  the 
way  to  the  police  station.  He  told  me,  with  signs  of  a 
feeling  that  in  an  organism  less  lymphatic  and  less 
sleepy  might  have  amounted  to  curiosity,  and  that 
would,  I  was  sure,  develop  after  I  left  him  into  a  personal 
anxiety. 

On  the  way  to  the  police  station  I  experienced  that 
emotional  daze  which  recalled  the  night  I  walked  four 
miles  in  the  dark  to  fetch  a  priest  to  a  dying  woman. 
Somehow  that  had  been  very  awkward.  I  never  had 
met  the  priest,  and  wondered  all  the  way  whether  he 
might  be  expected  to  come  willingly.  There  was 
another  night,  wet  and  cold,  when  I  drove  in  mad 
haste  for  a  doctor,  and  a  bridge  was  down.  .  .  .  The 
' 


218  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

doctor,  the  clergyman,  and  the  policeman  .  .  .  the 
Trouble  Trinity. 

I  climbed  the  steps  under  the  green  light. 

At  first  I  could  see  no  one  in  the  station,  for  the  lieu 
tenant  was  bent  heavily  over  his  blotter  and  chose  not 
to  look  up. 

Taking  the  revolver  out  of  my  pocket,  I  laid  it  on  the 
rail  of  the  high  desk. 

This  brought  up  the  lieutenant's  head. 

"There's  a  story  goes  with  that,"  I  said. 

He  stood  up  now,  a  ruddy  man  with  a  dyed  mustache 
and  little,  sharp,  dark  eyes,  who  stared  at  me  with  pulled- 
together  brows. 

"What's  the  idea?"  he  demanded. 

"I  took  that  away  from  a  man  who  pointed  it  at  me." 
Which  sounded,  when  I  had  said  it,  exactly  like  a  school 
boy's  complaint  at  teacher's  desk. 

"The  hell  you  did!"  remarked  the  lieutenant. 

He  still  stood  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets. 

"Where  was  this?"  He  now  reached  for  the  weapon 
and  quietly  looked  to  see  how  many  shells  it  held. 

Well,  I  got  out  the  story  at  last  and  succeeded  in 
arousing  an  interest  that  manifested  itself  first  in  the 
lieutenant's  decision  to  sit  down,  and  second  in  a  sum 
mons  that  brought  in  a  man  who  gave  me  a  strong 
impression  of  nose  and  scarf-pin — an  intensely  casual 
man  who  vacantly  looked  me  over  while  the  lieutenant 
spoke,  then  dropped  the  last  of  a  cigar  into  a  titanic 
cuspidor. 

Bill  was  to  go  and  see  what  all  this  meant — go  through 
the  apartment-building  next  door,  and  through  our  own 
house,  also  to  see,  and  so  forth.  There  hadn't  been  any 
report.  But  the  thing  had  just  happened.  Maybe  this 
was  Butch  Thowler.  Or  maybe  Langier.  It  sounded 
like  Langier.  Did  Bill  understand  that  Langier  was 
out? 

Bill  didn't  know,  and  apparently  had  no  opinion. 


THE  BUGLE  219 

He  went  back  for  his  overcoat  and  moved  casually  toward 
the  door.  He  seemed  to  leave  the  labor  of  opening  the 
door  to  me. 

As  I  placed  my  hand  on  the  knob  the  lieutenant  spoke 
up  again. 

"By  the  way,  son,  what  d'you  happen  to  be  doing  on 
the  roof?" 

"Doing?"  I  turned  indignantly.  "Doing?  You  don't 
suppose  I  was  there  by  appointment,  do  you?" 

At  which  the  lieutenant  became  extremely  solemn  and 
fatherly. 

"Don't  get  scrappy.  I'm  asking  you  a  question. 
You  must  have  been  up  there  for  something.  It  isn't 
a  summer  night.  You  hadn't  carried  your  bed  up 
there." 

"I  went  up  to  look  at  the  city,"  I  said.  "Is  that 
lawful?" 

"I  see,"  said  the  lieutenant.     "Go  on,  Bill." 

Bill  went  on  as  I  opened  the  door,  leaving  me  to 
follow.  Bill,  it  soon  appeared,  was  a  ward  detective. 
That  is,  it  appeared  when  I  asked  him  what  he  was. 

"What  are  you?"  asked  Bill. 

I  had  never  in  my  life  listened  to  two  questions  so 
hard  to  answer  as  the  two  here  fallen  together  less  than 
five  minutes  apart.  What  was  I  doing  on  the  roof? 
What  was  I  doing  on  the  roof  that  could  be  made  to 
sound  sane  or  plausible  to  a  man  with  a  dyed  mustache 
and  shoe-button  eyes?  And  now,  "What  are  you?" 
How  could  any  explanation  of  myself  be  made  to  sound 
excusable  to  a  satiated  ward  detective  with  a  purple 
nose  and  a  scarf-pin  of  such  extraordinary  splendor? 

All  the  same,  when  I  had  told  Bill  (his  name  is  Mor- 
rissey)  something  about  my  humble  functions  as  a 
writing  person  he  showed  real  interest.  He  had  a 
brother-in-law  who  used  to  be  a  reporter.  Now  he  was 
a  court  clerk.  A  crackerjack  writer.  Especially  on 
racing  stuff  and  sports.  They  sent  him  all  the  way  to 


220  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Reno  to  do  the  Jeffreys-Johnson  fight.  Why,  he  knew 
Jim  Corbett  just  like  you  would  know  your  own  brother, 
and  fellows  like  Biff  Hannigan  .  .  .  well,  they  read  their 
contracts  to  him  and  told  him  all  their  troubles. 

As  promising  to  aid  conversation  I  said  I  had  known 
Biff  when  he  was  a  boy. 

A  clever  kid,  that  Hannigan,  was  Bill's  opinion. 
Nobody's  damn  fool.  Bet  your  pants  on  that.  They 
said  his  grandfather  had  left  him  a  lot  of  money.  Biff 
was  a  good  free  spender.  He'd  blow  it  all  quick  enough. 

As  for  Bill  himself,  he  would  like  to  have  a  hell  of  a 
nice  farm,  somewhere  in  Pennsylvania,  say,  and  raise 
horses. 

"And  chuck  New  York?"  I  asked  him. 

"Oh,  I'd  like  to  get  in  here  for  a  couple  of  months 
in  the  winter  and  see  the  shows  and  run  around  a  little. 
But  New  York  ain't  what  it  used  to  be.  Not  by  a 
damned  sight.  Too  much  interference.  When  they 
get  tired  of  interfering  with  everything  else  they  pound 
the  police.  It's  got  to  be  a  great  burg  for  soreheads. 
Makes  you  sick  to  see  these  reformers  running  around. 
.  .  .  Bugs A  lot  of  Bugs." 


VI 

Though  it  came  to  nothing  of  great  importance — ex 
cept  the  importance  of  something  that  didn't  happen,  or 
that  hasn't  happened  yet — I  was  glad  to  follow  at  Bill 
Morrissey's  elbow  while  he  looked  into  the  matter  of 
my  man  of  the  roof. 

The  most  interesting  part  of  it,  of  course,  was  Bill 
himself.  He  continued  to  be  so  startlingly  casual,  with 
out  being  exactly  perfunctory.  I  suppose  it  was  quite 
professional,  this  way  of  doing  it,  though  it  hardly  meas 
ured  to  any  conduct  I  had  fancied  in  a  police  person. 

Twice  in  the  midst  of  our  investigation — I  became 
a  part  of  the  affair  because  I  had  seen  the  man's  face 


THE  BUGLE  221 

and  this  might  have  a  bearing — he  returned  to  his  dream 
of  a  farm.  He  asked  me  whether  I  knew  about  farms. 
Were  there  any  good  farms  in  Connecticut,  for  example — 
not  regular  high-priced  big  farms,  but  say  a  smallish 
farm,  with  a  nice  little  house  and  a  barn?  A  barn  you 
could  keep  a  flivver  in,  too,  and  say  a  couple  of  cows. 
He  wanted  to  know  also  whether  in  my  part  of  Con 
necticut  people  were  Democrats  or  Republicans — or  did 
they  have  Socialists  there? 

It  did  not  seem  to  bother  him  that  our  discussion 
of  farms  had  to  be  fragmentary.  In  fact,  it  was  just 
after  knocking  on  one  of  the  doors  in  the  house  we  were 
touring  from  floor  to  floor  that  he  turned  to  me  ear 
nestly — 

"They  raise  tobacco?  The  hell  yer  say!  I  thought 
it  was  all  in  Kentucky  and  Virginia.  I  get  yer!  I  re 
member  them  *  Connecticut  wrappers.'  But  I  guess 
I'd  buy  my  smokes.  Something  plainer  for  me — like 
corn  and  barley  and  strawberries  and  melons  ..." 

The  woman  who  opened  the  door  stared  (Bill  didn't 
hurry  his  remark  because  the  door  had  opened),  and 
Bill  became  a  detective  again,  without  haste,  and  genially. 
To  me  it  seemed  distressing  to  intrude  upon  privacy; 
to  startle  it  with  unexpected  inquiries  which  amounted 
to,  "Have  you  been  robbed?"  But  Bill  was  not  at  all 
annoyed  by  his  obligations.  He  was  the  kind  of  man 
that  keeps  free  of  effects.  He  watched  effects  as  you 
might  watch  the  rings  after  dropping  a  pebble  into  a 
pond. 

I  began  to  hope  that  he  would  get  his  farm.  His 
desire  to  have  in  it  nothing  unreasonable.  But  I 
couldn't  make  him  fit  the  picture.  I  wondered  if  he 
would  keep  on  with  the  scarf-pin,  and  what  Mrs.  Mor- 
rissey  wanted. 

In  the  end,  after  finding  the  unfastened  skylight,  we 
found  the  unlocked  apartment  door.  The  odd  part  of 
this  was  that  the  unlocked  door  had  precipitated  a  pro- 


222  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

digious  quarrel  between  two  very  nice  old  women  who 
had  each  accused  the  other  of  a  negligence.  Both  wore 
quilted  kimono  things,  which  led  me  to  think  that 
they  had  been  preparing  for  bed,  and  this  made  Mor- 
rissey's  inquiry  seem  a  cruelty.  They  had  already  as 
sured  themselves  that  nothing  had  been  stolen,  but 
they  began  all  over  again  to  be  sure.  From  the  hall 
way  I  gathered  that  this  process  proceeded  on  a  system 
— that  the  vital  spots  were  fixed  and  familiar;  otherwise 
it  was  impossible  to  understand  how  they  could  be  sure 
in  so  short  a  space  of  time.  Of  course  there  was  the 
need  to  get  rid  of  Morrissey.  That  may  have  hastened 
them.  Anyway,  they  were  sure.  And  they  gasped  their 
gratitude. 

The  top  floor,  where  two  bachelors  were  having  a  party, 
gave  Morrissey  his  last  chapter  and  his  story. 

"This  crook  came  in  the  afternoon,"  he  said,  "got 
frightened  out  of  the  old  ladies'  home,  slipped  to  the 
top  floor,  and  was  cornered  there  by  that  fat  boob  who 
came  home  at  four;  and  he  hid  in  that  roof-ladder  closet. 
But  Mr.  Fatty  had  the  door  open  'n  account  of  that 
ice-box  (with  the  booze  and  things  in  it).  Crook  couldn't 
see  a  clear  way.  Then  probably  he  got  things  loose  at 
the  skylight.  That  was  a  bum  chance.  He'd  rather 
walk  out.  He  waited  for  that.  Then  they  put  that 
trunk  out  in  the  hall  and  Mr.  Crook  couldn't  open  the 
door.  Likely  he  was  on  the  roof  quite  a  while,  expect 
ing  to  get  back  again,  maybe,  when  the  party  was  over. 
Then  he  tried  his  luck  on  your  roof.  Some  Swede  might 
have  left  the  iron  door  unlocked.  Say — " 

Morrissey  looked  down  at  me  after  lighting  a  fresh  cigar. 

"How  did  you  get  the  gun  from  him?" 

"By  breaking  his  wrist,"  I  said.  "Or  it  sounded 
that  way." 

"Well,  what  d'yer  know  about  that!" 

Morrissey  swathed  me  with  smoke  and  watched  me 
emerge  with  something  very  like  real  interest. 


THE  BUGLE  223 

"Pretty  good,  eh?  Damn  good  stuff.  Regular 
jooey-jit.  I'll  have  to  tell  your  friend  Biff  Hannigan  I 
know  some  one  who  can  take  him  on.  I'm  not  kiddin* 
you.  That  was  good  stuff." 

I  felt  that  he  would,  if  he  could  have  thought  of  a 
decent  way  of  doing  it,  have  made  it  still  clearer  that  he 
meant  to  praise  the  feat  not  merely  as  something  done 
by  me,  but  objectively,  as  a  thing  neat  in  itself. 

"As  for  that,"  I  said,  "so  long  as  you  don't  ask  me 
to  prove  that  I  could  do  it  again  all  will  be  well.  That 
is,  all  will  be  well  except  for  Mr.  Crook." 

"Yes,"  observed  Morrissey,  "we  got  him  tagged  for 
a  while." 

But  I  hoped  that  Morrissey  might  not  profit  by  the 
tag.  I  didn't  like  any  side  of  the  prospect  of  a  captured 
thief.  If  the  thief  who  had  stolen  nothing  was  willing 
to  call  it  square  I  was  ardently  disposed  to  have  the 
matter  stand  that  way. 

"Anyhow,"  I  said  to  Morrissey  when  we  were  part 
ing,  "you  would  almost  be  willing  to  call  me  physically 
fit." 

"Physically  .  .  ."  Morrissey  gathered  me  to  a  focus. 
"Sure  thing!  Why  not?" 


vn 

I  have  just  been  reading  again  Rudley's  letter  that 
came  to  me  last  January — written  aboard  ship,  most  of 
it,  with  a  postscript  added  in  London — a  letter  bristling 
with  unsaid  things,  as  per  this  highly  censored  interval. 

The  letter  to  Sarah  which  came  two  weeks  later — 
there  was  a  kind  of  bitterness  in  its  getting  to  me — had 
more  color.  This  letter  had,  in  fact,  a  defiant  high 
spirits,  or  what  seemed  to  be  that.  Rudley's  amazing 
confidence  shone  in  every  line  that  spoke  of  his  inten 
tions  and  expectations.  Unless  I  have  read  him  wrong 
ly  he  is  not  at  all  confident  about  Sarah — one  way  or 


224  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

the  other.  It  would  have  been  interesting  to  read  him 
on  the  subject  of  Sarah  at  a  time  when  he  was  not  being 
borne  along  on  the  tide  of  an  extraordinary  emotion  of 
zeal  for  the  fight  ahead  of  him. 

Now  here  comes  another  letter  from  France,  written 
before  America's  war  days.  The  fact  that  I  see  this 
also  is  the  best  evidence — quite  aside  from  its  allusions 
— that  Sarah  has  written  no  word.  This  new  letter 
shows  him  caught  up  by  a  no\itiate's  ardor  for  the 
great  game,  writing  "Lafayette"  with  a  tingle  of  exul 
tation;  and  in  a  kind  of  track-meet  eagerness  for  the 
get-away  he  stands  out  sharply  as  so  much  poised  energy 
chuckling  in  the  face  of  death. 

I  wished  he  had  told  how  he  worked  out  the  matter 
of  the  enlistment.  Evidently  the  path  behind  him  is 
soon  forgotten. 

.  .  .  These  boys  [he  says]  are  wonderful.  Just  kids,  most 
of  them.  Here  and  in  the  Flying  Corps — you  would  laugh 
to  know  how  young  some  of  them  are — eighteen,  nineteen, 
twenty.  It  is  astonishing.  I  feel  like  a  grown-up.  All  sorts 
of  remarkable  boys.  And  some  men  that  make  me  feel  like 
an  infant.  Oh  yes! — I  feel  young  enough  most  of  the  time. 
It's  tremendous,  this  flying  fight  thing.  Of  co  rse  I'm  "cash 
ing  in"  on  my  engineering  and  my  motor  experience — just 
enough  to  keep  me  from  moping  over  the  delays.  Nothing 
else  is  like  flying,  nothing  else  counts  much  in  making  you — 
either  you  can  fly  or  you  can't.  If  you  can't,  they  prefer  to 
find  out  before  your  failure  has  been  too  expensive.  And  yet  a 
lad  who  killed  himself  yesterday — and  no  one  but  himself  to 
blame — was  one  of  the  most  wonderful  in  the  bunch.  It 
was  just  luck. 

I've  seen  some  of  the  great  French  aces — glimpses.  And 
there  is  a  daredevil  Englishman.  As  for  looking  the  part,  I  like 
— but  of  course  I  mustn't  give  his  name.  You'll  hear  from 
him.  He  was  standing  beside  his  Spad  yesterday  when  one 
of  my  chums  grunted,  "D'Artagnan."  I  can't  begin  to  tell 
you  about  the  spirit  among  these  men.  You  don't  get  it — 
at  least  not  this  way — when  you're  just  going  through  the 


THE  BUGLE  225 

regular  game  of  living.  Perhaps  they're  not  all  different. 
Maybe  it  is  what  has  happened  to  them,  and  what  is  going  to 
happen  to  them.  Can  you  imagine  life  and  death  coming  to 
mean  the  same  thing?  Of  course  you  can't.  Not  that  much 
is  said.  Zorn  would  have  to  guess  out  what  they  were  think 
ing.  But  it's  clear  enough  that  something — call  it  any  fancy 
name  you  like — holds  them  all — even  while  they  are  acting 
very  much  like  other  fellows.  You  see,  there's  a  history  be 
hind  the  game — something  has  been  built  up.  You  feel  it 
before  you  find  out  what  it  is,  or  before  you  could  begin  to 
figure  out  what  it  might  be.  And  it  does  something  to  you — 
changes  everything.  Not  any  thinking  you  might  do  about 
those  at  home — of  course  not — unless  it  might  be  (may  I 
say  this?)  to  make  certain  splendidly  understanding  persons 
seem  more  worth  while  than  ever. 

Some  day  you  will  write  to  me.  I  know  this  positively. 
We  aviators  acquire  superstitions.  They  keep  one  warm. 
And  I  have  a  thrilling  hunch  in  the  matter  of  a  letter  from  you. 
But  don't  delay,  because  the  absence  of  a  letter  is,  I'm  afraid, 
depriving  a  fractional  but  important  element  in  the  air  service 
of  a  great  stimulus.  If  you  have  written,  please  remember  the 
torpedo  hazards  and  do  it  again. 

In  fact,  now  that  the  U.  S.  is  in  it  I  don't  see  how  you  can 
escape.  Soldiers  must  have  what  they  ask  for.  I'm  not 
wailing  for  socks.  What  I  want  can  be  done  with  a  pen. 

I  wrote  to  him  to-day.  Sarah  knows  that  I  have 
done  so.  I  wanted  her  to  know.  Without  a  word  be 
tween  us,  she  knows  that  I  felt  the  situation  to  be  in 
tolerable.  He  is  a  soldier.  That  is  a  commanding  fact. 
Any  hurt  of  ours  becomes  a  small  matter.  Of  course 
Zorn  must  be  writing  to  him  regularly.  As  for  Sarah, 
she  may  do  it  yet.  I  don't  know  just  how  she  would 
do  it — just  how  she  could  do  it.  There  might  be  a  way. 
She  will  think  all  the  things  that  only  a  woman,  per 
haps,  can  think  about  a  man  at  the  front.  Making 
those  bandages  and  compresses  in  a  Red  Cross  class  is 
a  big  thinking  job.  .  .  It  must  be  tremendously  softening. 
It  must  bring  up  some  very  cruel  pictures.  .  .  .  Mean- 


226  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

while,  I'm  sure  she  is  glad  that  I  have  done  it.  I  saw 
this  in  her  eyes. 

And  yet  she  has  amazed  me  by  receiving  Pine  with 
what  I  first  took  for  a  horrible  insincerity,  but  which  I 
begin  to  regard  as  a  real  interest — as  if  she  were  at  least 
touched  by  something  like  fascination. 

Pine  has  taken  on  a  big  air  about  the  war.  It  is  very 
ingenious.  It  is  even  rather  impressive;  for  he  never 
by  any  chance  belittles  any  expressions  of  patriotism. 
Nothing  he  says  gives  one  a  handle  with  which  to  fling 
a  retort  at  his  infernally  handsome  head. 

But  this  can't  go  on.  Sooner  or  later  he  is  bound  to 
blunder.  Then  I  hope  Sarah  will  neatly  rip  him  up. 

He  may  ignore  this  call  for  volunteers.  He  may 
ignore  every  other  call.  Yet  something  will  wring 
the  truth  out  of  him.  And  then  this  Olympian 
business  will  be  at  an  end.  Sooner  or  later  it  will 
be  proved  that  every  creature  must  be  on  one  side  or 
the  other. 

The  position,  if  it  is  a  position,  of  those  who  can  pull 
away  has  begun  to  have  for  me  an  appalling  mystery. 
The  Socialist  theory  I  can  understand.  .  .  .  That  we 
are  not  only  a  brotherhood,  but  naturally  an  organized 
brotherhood,  and  that  an  organized  refusal  of  war  must 
end  it — that  even  isolated  refusals  to  accept  refusal 
must,  in  the  end,  shrivel  under  the  pressure.  But  in 
dividual  withdrawal,  even  from  organization — this  utter 
Anarchism  with  or  without  the  name — is  hard  to  under 
stand. 

I  have  wished  that  I  could  look  Anarchism  in  the  eyes. 
Not  merely  read  scraps  of  its  sentiment.  Not  merely 
hear  soap-box  subtleties  dribbled  cautiously  in  sight  of 
a  policeman  with  his  stenographer.  No — the  real  thing, 
whatever  it  is.  Not  selfish  individual  rebellion,  refusing 
a  label,  but  devoted  rebellion  with  a  banner,  and  a  joy 
of  risking  jail. 

Pine  won't  do.    Even  if  he  could  be  tricked  into  talk 


THE  BUGLE  227 

I'm  sure  he  has  nothing  but  a  personal  feeling  for  what 
he  sees  as  the  aura  of  Anarchism.  The  articulation  of 
its  body  doesn't  appeal  to  him. 

I  met  Pine  in  the  hall  last  night  just  after  he  had  said 
good  night  to  Sarah. 

"Pine,"  I  said,  "will  you  take  me  to  Anna  Jassard?" 

He  had  a  dumfounded  look  for  a  moment.  I  knew 
that  he  was  fumbling  with  the  bearings  of  the  matter, 
with  how  it  might  affect  him  one  way  or  the  other;  per 
haps  with  curiosity,  too,  or  perplexity  as  to  what  Anna 
Jassard  might  think  or  do  and  what  1  might  be  expected 
to  think  or  do. 

His  first  venture  was  an  evasion. 

"You  mean,  take  you  to  hear  her?" 

"No,"  I  said,  "not  merely  to  hear  her  as  an  audience 
in  the  ruck  hears  her.  I  want  to  talk  with  her  alone. 
You  will  introduce  me — be  sponsor  for  me  as  just  a 
plain  fool,  not  to  be  suspected  of  being  an  official  or 
affiliated  fool." 

"I  see,"  said  Pine,  with  an  odd  smile.  "Well- 
why  shouldn't  I?  ...  I  mean  that  of  course  I  will. 
I'm  not  a  crony,  you  know.  ...  I  haven't  seen  her 
for  quite  a  while.  But  I  know  her.  1  have  high 
respect  for  her.  It  will  be  very  illuminating  to  you 
.  .  .  very.  Not  as  you  have  thought.  Perhaps  not 
at  all  as  you  have  thought.  That  doesn't  matter. 
She  will  be  glad  to  see  you.  You  will  be  fair.  That 
doesn't  matter,  either.  She  will  attend  to  that.  When 
shall  we  go?" 

Nevertheless,  now  that  we  are  to  go,  I  have  a  some 
what  appalled,  if  not  precisely  an  awed  uneasiness.  It 
isn't  exactly  as  if  I  were  going  to  call  on  the  de\il.  The 
devil  is  standardized.  We  can  objectify  our  conclusions 
with  regard  to  him.  He  is  a  fallen  angel.  There  is  no 
pretense  that  he  didn't  fall  or  that  his  fall  is  not  final. 
Emerson,  I  think  it  was,  called  him  "the  dear  old 
devil."  .  .  But  the  arch- Anarchist  .  .  that  is  different. 


228  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

One  can't  fancy  the  devil  as  being  irritating,  for  instance; 
or  disappointing.     And  that  is  a  great  matter. 


vm 

There  is  to  be  a  draft. 

It  was  bad  psychology  to  call  it  that.  A  "conscript" 
army  has  a  disagreeable  sound.  Conscription  should 
have  received  a  heroic  name.  While  we  are  Irving  on 
labels  this  would  have  made  a  difference.  In  the  end 
I  suppose  the  slacker  instinct  is  superior  to  descriptive 
ornament.  Yet  a  kindling  name  might  have  helped  the 
kindling  fact.  There  are  a  thousand  evidences  of  a 
wish  to  get  great  words  fastened  safely  and  effectively 
upon  great  things.  After  studying  the  geography  of 
Europe  down  to  its  very  lanes  and  hillocks,  we  are  to 
study  the  geography  of  our  own  national  mind,  to 
classify  ourselves,  to  classify  the  tools  of  battle,  to  label 
men  and  women,  not  only  as  to  what  they  are  worth 
in  war,  but  as  to  what  they  are  worth  in  a  nation  at 
war. 

We  shall  do  this,  I  am  sure,  with  as  much  of  bewilder 
ment  as  if  we  had  not  seen  the  whole  drama  of  partici 
pation  acted  out  in  Europe.  With  the  conflagration 
in  full  blaze,  and  burning  in  our  direction;  with  hose  and 
buckets  moving  under  frantic  effort;  with  energy  and 
courage  straining  in  devout  determination  to  smother 
the  flames  and  restrain  the  incendiary — there  will  be 
the  pacifist  smugly  asking  us  all  to  sit  down  and  reason 
together  on  the  question  of  fire-proofing.  .  .  . 

I  have  registered  as  of  New  York — after  finding  a 
task  in  the  registration  work.  For  a  time  I  debated  as 
to  the  sentiment  of  registration  from  my  home  place. 
But  the  irony  might  just  as  well  have  a  setting  here  with 
the  vast  group. 

There  will  be  something  large,  something  theatrically 
awesome,  in  this  box  seat  at  the  national  lottery. 


THE  BUGLE  229 

I  will  have  a  number.  They  can't  take  that  away 
from  me. 

If  I  am  drawn,  the  United  States  will  have  to  come 
to  the  point.  It  shall  be  yea  or  nay  for  a  reason.  And 
I  shall  find  my  work  on  my  own  account. 

Aunt  Paul  couldn't  wholly  conceal  her  thoughts  when 
she  looked  at  me  after  hearing  of  the  draft  plan.  There 
was  no  need  to  express  them. 

Sarah  is  so  stirred  by  all  that  stands  in  the  immediate 
foreground  that  I  am  sure  she  regards  the  great  lottery 
as  a  negligible  detail. 

"We  women  may  not  be  numbered,"  she  said,  "but 
we  are  called  just  the  same." 

Sarah  has  begun  to  act  as  if  she  had  been  called. 
She  has  been  helping  on  the  registration  (it  was  in  a 
restaurant),  and  is  now  Red-Crossing  for  most  of  the 
daylight  hours.  She  may  not  end  in  a  Battalion  of 
Death,  but  she  will  get  some  things  done. 

She  has  been  diagramming  for  me  the  bandages  and 
compresses.  There  is  one  bandage  with  five  tails  to 
it.  ...  This  puttering  will  not  keep  her  very  long. 
She  argues,  why  not  do  this  by  machinery?  Surely 
not  merely  days,  but  minutes  must  count.  And 
there  must  be  bigger  things  women  can  do  and  do 
at  once. 

"A  needed  bandage  is  a  pretty  big  thing,  my  dear," 
remarked  my  aunt. 

"I  know,"  expostulated  Sarah.  "But  you  should  see 
the  fluffy  way  they  are  doing  it.  It  is  as  if  a  group  of 
children  were  at  work  —  without  tools.  This  is  the 
United  States  of  America." 

"Yes,"  snapped  my  aunt,  "it  is  because  this  is  the 
United  States  of  America  that  we  haven't  war  tools. 
Let's  keep  our  hands  and  heads  busy  until  the  tools 
come  along." 

Naturally  Sarah  wants  to  finish  the  war  by  three- 
forty-five  to-morrow  afternoon. 

16 


230  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

IX 

I  have  seen  my  ogre,  the  Anarchist  woman. 

The  result  might  have  been  different  if  I  had  chanced 
upon  the  meeting  rather  than  challenged  it.  I  don't 
know.  There  was  nothing  to  indicate  that  she  was  not 
as  she  always  is.  Yet  even  she,  this  storm-petrel  of 
our  civilization,  must  have  felt  some  constraint.  Above 
all  there  is  the  pressure  of  the  war.  She,  along  with  the 
rest  of  the  world,  must  be  conscious  of  the  changed 
center  of  gravity. 

I  didn't  get  to  her  without  tempering.  It  saved  time 
and  a  few  blunders  to  have  Pine  expound  her  on  the 
way. 

"If  you  expect  anything  shrill,"  said  Pine,  "you  will 
be  disappointed.  If  you  expect  yawping  about  ex 
plosives  you  will  be  disappointed  again.  She  never  has 
preached  violence.  No  one  ever  has  accused  her  of 
violence  or  of  participation  in  violence." 

"I  assume,"  I  said,  "that  you're  not  speaking  of  her 
tongue." 

"I'm  speaking  of  traditions,"  said  Pine.  "They  are 
important.  We  wrap  traditions  about  people  and  be 
lieve  in  our  own  scarecrows.  I  thought  that  maybe  you 
would  like  to  know  that  she  never  has  been  called  a 
violent  person,  even  by  ingenious  detractors.  In  fact, 
she  has  always  seemed  to  me  as  rather  too  sentimental." 

"Your  *  sentimental '  is  rather  Tunny,"  I  said.  "The 
man  who  injected  the  explosive  that  precipitated  this 
war  was,  I  am  sure,  a  very  sentimental  person.  A  senti 
mentalist  shot  Lincoln  behind  the  ear." 

"Also  he  had  two  legs,"  declared  Pine,  calmly.  "There 
are  kinds  as  well  as  degrees  in  this  quality  I'm  thinking 
of.  The  point  is  that  Anna  Jassard  is  not  violent  or 
cruel — that  she  is  a  dreamer,  an  Idealist.  Of  course  all 
Idealists  are  dangerous.  It  was  so  decided  in  Palestine 
.a  great  many  years  ago.  They  gave  the  Idealist  the 


THE  BUGLE  231 

center  of  the  stage  when  they  set  up  the  three  crosses. 
This  Idealist  happens  to  be  not  much  of  a  fanatic.  She 
is  a  philosopher.  If  you  have  heard  of  her  lecturing 
hundreds  of  times  every  year  I  don't  know  what  you 
may  have  thought  she  lectured  about.  It  may  be  that 
you  would  have  been  disconcerted  to  find  her  talking 
about  great  literature;  about  the  drama,  in  which  she 
has  a  passionate  interest  and  a  profound  knowledge; 
about  those  very  aspirations  of  the  illuminated  individ 
ual  soul  that  are  nearest  to  the  highest  consciousness 
of  humanity. 

"Possibly  you  have  associated  her  somewhat  with  the 
police.  My  impression  is  that  she  was  arrested  and  con 
victed  but  once.  This  was  during  times  of  bread  riots, 
long  ago,  when  she  said  something  that  was  said  many 
times  in  the  same  interval  by  college  professors  and  at 
least  one  eminent  dignitary  of  the  Church.  But  you 
see,  she  was  an  Anarchist.  And  when  an  Anarchist  says 
two  and  two  make  four  the  multiplication  table  at  once 
goes  under  a  cloud." 

"And  why  not?"  I  demanded.  "Motive  is  the  big 
factor.  It  is  intent  that  spreads  the  cloud.  Your 
bomb-thrower  uses  gravitation.  The  force  is  perfectly 
respectable.  But  that  doesn't  whiten  him." 

We  wrangled  all  the  way  to  that  door.  .  .  .  Probably 
it  was  not  the  best  sort  of  introduction  to  my  ordeal  in 
the  homely  room.  Yet  it  gave  me  something. 

Pine  left  us  there  together  .  .  .  left  us  with  a  smile 
that  contrived  not  to  be  irritating.  After  all,  there  was 
no  burden  upon  him.  And  the  Anarchist  woman  ad 
justed  a  chair  for  me  at  a  table  littered  with  books  and 
pamphlets.  There  was  a  vase  of  flowers  somewhere, 
on  the  edge  of  this  table  or  near  by  ...  marigolds,  I 
think.  But  I  cannot  be  sure  of  anything  in  that  place 
except  the  face  of  this  strange  woman  .  .  .  eying  me  with 
an  often  startling  softness  of  attention  or  a  kind  of 
kindled  patience;  of  her  hair  wound  in  a  plain  knot; 


232  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

of  high  cheek-bones  and  fighting  lips  that  were  capable 
of  an  alleviating  smile.  I  noticed  her  simple,  dark  dress 
and  something  white  at  the  neck  and  wrists. 

Of  her  voice  one  might  say  that  probably  it  is  any 
thing  she  chooses  to  make  it.  It  has  the  sound  of  having 
been  intensely  used — like  the  muscles  of  her  face.  She 
spoke  swiftly.  I  can  understand  why  the  stenographers 
have  writhed.  There  is  no  torrent  as  from  one  who 
hasn't  had  a  chance  to  get  things  said.  I'm  sure  that 
this  was  not  an  effect  due  to  the  fact  that  I  am  very 
small  game.  She  has  said  it  all  too  many  times,  in  too 
many  ways,  to  too  many  sorts  to  be  eager.  Certainly  I 
didn't  get  the  impression  that  she  believed  in  conver 
sational  violence — at  least  not  for  the  sport  of  it,  or  in 
conflict  with  a  solemn  small  person  who  is  not  a  capi 
talist.  Moreover,  her  telephone  rang  a  good  deal. 
These  punctuations  do  not  help  the  curve  of  continuity. 
And  they  do  lower  the  temperature  of  an  argument. 

I  say  "argument,"  though  she  ingeniously  prevented 
the  talk  from  reaching  the  real  size  of  that. 

Perhaps  she  did  not  play  with  me,  but — well,  she  was 
abominably  patient  at  times.  And  not  altogether  with 
out  a  flame,  either. 

There  was  an  hour  of  it. 

Some  moments  of  that  hour  will,  I  am  sure,  produce 
infuriating  recollections  .  .  .  without  having  been  in 
furiating  in  themselves.  Other  moments  are  certain 
to  shine  with  an  extraordinary  brilliance. 

The  hour  can't  be  written.  It  was  too  devious  to 
make  a  document;  there  was  too  much  swirl  and  too 
little  current;  though  it  had  Book  material.  ...  1  can 
see  a  chapter  on  "The  Delusion  of  Liberty."  I  can  see 
complete  personal  liberty  as  a  great  desire;  perhaps 
as  the  supreme  delusion  ...  as  fantastic  as  a  drop  of 
water  hoping  to  survive  separation  from  the  sea,  or  a 
grain  of  sand  from  the  shore  going  into  business  for 
itself. 


THE  BUGLE 


I  told  her  so.  And  she  looked  at  me,  her  chin  in  her 
hand,  without  for  an  instant  showing  her  electrically 
quick  reaction. 

"Do  you  know,"  she  said,  "you  have  everything  so 
comfortably  card-catalogued.  Your  cosmogony  is  all 
scrubbed,  washed  behind  its  ears,  its  nose  wiped,  and 
set  up  where  it  won't  get  its  clothes  dirty.  You  ought 
to  feel  very  comfortable." 

Which  means  that  we  reached  pleasantly  caustic 
terms. 

"As  to  feeling  comfortable,"  I  said,  "perhaps  I  have 
a  right  to  that  aspiration.  I  do  want  to  be  comfort 
able.  I  hope  you  won't  believe  that  I  came  to  you 
looking  for  trouble.  I  wanted  you  to  make  clear  to 
me  something  that  has  been  incredible — a  philosophy 
that  refuses  law — not  an  impulse,  but  a  philosophy. 
I'm  trying  to  understand  how  it  can  be  believed  that  a 
universe  of  law — law  in  which  there  seems  never  to 
have  been  the  slightest  variation — can  have  a  feature 
anywhere  that  is  not  to  be  subject  to  law;  that  is,  to 
order.  Nature  seems  to  me  to  be  insisting  on  order. 
This  seems  to  me  like  saying  that  she  insists  on  being 
comfortable.  Make  Nature  uncomfortable  and  you 
hear  from  her.  She  keeps  her  books  balanced.  What 
I  continue  to  see  in  your  philosophy  is  a  wish  to  get 
comfort  without  order.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  universe 
is  whispering,  shouting  all  the  time,  that  this  can't  be 
done." 

She  laughed  softly.  "Is  it  shouting  at  man  to  lock 
himself  in  a  cage,  link  up  creatures  in  a  chain-gang,  to 
invent  horrors  of  restraint,  of  open,  brutal  slavery  and 
call  it  his  law?  Nature's  laws  are  all  right.  Whether 
they  are  or  not,  they  are  here.  We  must  recognize 
them.  But  don't  you  think  we  have  trouble  enough 
adjusting  ourselves  to  them — we  in  our  ignorance  of 


234  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

what  they  mean  at  their  best — without  devising  systems 
of  which  there  is  no  whisper  in  nature — ghastly  systems 
that  thwart  and  mangle  and  crush,  that  stain  the  beauty 
of  nature,  that  deny  the  impulses  belonging  to  the  very 
essence  of  nature?" 

"What  I  mean,"  I  said,  "is  this:  That  of  course  it  is 
not  a  case  of  nature  and  man/  Man  being  part  of  nat 
ure — unnatural  as  he  is — he  can't  run  his  game  without 
using  nature's  machinery.  And  nature's  machine  in 
sists  upon  order,  not  approximate  order,  but  absolute 
order.  That  is  nature's  condition  of  peace.  When  man 
insists  on  order  he  is  playing  nature's  game.  His  agree 
ment  to  play  it  is  called  law.  It  is  a  platitude  cf  human 
law  that  it  is  not  made  to  establish  justice,  but  to  estab 
lish  order  as  the  first  step  toward  justice.  We  don't 
make  vehicles  keep  to  the  right  to  bring  justice,  but  to 
bring  order.  The  traffic  cop  over  there  at  Forty -second 
Street  and  Fifth  Avenue  isn't  maintaining  justice.  He 
is  maintaining  order.  To  take  him  away  would  result  in 
a  frightful  mess.  To  me  it  would  symbolize  Anarchism. 
As  I  make  it  out  you  want  a  world  without  the  traffic 
cop.  Isn't  that  it?" 

"Were  you  ever  in  a  prison?"  she  asked  me. 

"No." 

"It  is  too  bad.  Probably  you  have  thought  of  your 
self  as  educated.  And  yet  you  never  have  studied  jails 
— so  important  a  part  of  your  beautiful  system  of  order. 
Never  mind.  Some  day,  perhaps,  every  one  who  pre 
sumes  to  believe  in  jails  and  other  appurtenances  of 
order  will  feel  obliged  to  go  and  look  at  them,  as  you 
might  feel  obliged  to  know  about  the  furnace  in  your 
cellar — they  are  very  interesting.  The  point  is  that 
they  have  a  lot  of  what  you  call  order.  The  human 
creatures  in  them  are  in  quite  orderly  rows.  Their  souls 
are  squeezed  in  a  quite  orderly  way — by  the  yard,  by 
the  ounce,  and  by  the  clock.  They  symbolize  some 
thing,  too — you  are  greatly  interested  in  symbols. 


THE  BUGLE  235 

They  do  more  than  symbolize — they  represent  your  beau 
tiful  order.  They  do  in  a  precise  and  systematic  way 
inside  a  boundary  what  your  beautiful  order  does  out 
side  a  boundary  wherever  it  is  spread — pinch,  exas 
perate,  stultify,  and  malform  the  individual.  This  is 
why  I  don't  worship  your  foolish  traffic  cop.  This  is 
why  I  would  send  all  your  policemen  to  find  honest 
work." 

She  leaned  toward  me  with  her  two  elbows  on  the 
table. 

"...  I  watched  your  traffic  cop  the  other  day.  What 
do  you  suppose  he  actually  was  doing?  Was  he  ar 
ranging  the  currents  of  travel  for  people  on  foot? — 
people  who  were  independently  carrying  themselves 
over  the  surface  of  the  earth?  Not  at  all.  He  was  wind- 
milling  first  to  one  welter  of  limousines  and  then  to 
another,  leaving  the  poor  devils  on  foot  to  scramble  as 
best  they  could." 

"You  have  forgotten  the  street-cars.  We  don't  all 
ride  in  limousines." 

"But  I  haven't  forgotten  the  people  on  foot.  Your 
system  is  always  forgetting  them.  And  they  are  most 
of  us.  The  system  builds  up  a  thousand  artificial 
miseries  that  call  for  policemen — armed  policemen. 
Government  invents  one  withering  restraint  after  an 
other,  then  points  proudly  to  its  machinery  for  applying 
the  discomfort.  It  takes  a  holy  joy  in  its  new  thumb 
screws — and  calls  them  civilization.  It  is  as  if  a  man 
were  to  equip  himself  with  a  beautiful,  tight  steel  collar, 
and  then  chuckle  smugly  over  discovering  a  kind  of  tube 
that  would  enable  him  to  go  on  breathing. 

"As  for  that  pretty  contention  of  yours  that  man  is 
part  of  nature,  surely  no  one  ought  to  deny  it,  least 
of  all  the  Anarchist.  It  is  precisely  because  the  Anarchist 
wants  man  to  have  his  natural  liberty  that  the  trouble 
has  corne.  It  is  government — church  government  or 
state  government — that  has  set  up  this  idea  of  nature 


236  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

and  man.  And  having  done  so  it  goes  about  inventing 
a  ghastly  system  of  barbed-wire  entanglements  called 
laws.  You  talk  about  democracy.  The  best  you  can 
show  is  a  pitiful  travesty  of  the  natural  democracy  of 
nature,  that  natural  democracy  in  which  the  individual 
meets  pressure,  but  a  pressure  that  is  a  natural  mass 
pressure  instead  of  a  discriminating,  artificial,  goading, 
separating,  class-creating,  greed-supporting  'law*  press 
ure.  Nature's  laws  rest  upon  all  with  perfect  impar 
tiality.  They  make  no  millionaires.  They  establish  no 
slums.  They  organize  no  bayonets  to  keep  them  apart 
— to  multiply  the  riches  of  one  group  and  to  deepen  the 
despair  of  the  other." 

"Very  well,  then" — she  had  me  forward  now  on  the 
sharp  edge  of  my  chair — "let  us  go  on  with  your  mass 
pressure.  You  recognize  that  as  final?" 

"Social  pressure  is  all-sufficing." 

"Then  let  us  imagine  a  hundred  of  us  on  a  small 
island.  We  agree  that  we  shall  sleep  at  night  and  stay 
awake  during  the  day.  We  have  to  come  to  some 
agreement.  We  can't  have  a  committee — they  would 
be  policemen — but  we  agree  on  this  elemental  matter. 
What  would  happen  if  one  of  the  members  began  prac 
tising  on  a  cornet  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning?  I'm 
not  joking.  I'm  taking  this  as  an  elemental  problem." 

"Social  pressure  is  all-sufficing." 

"But  it  would  not  be  violent.  You  wouldn't  lock 
him  up?" 

"He  would  feel  the  pressure." 

"But  suppose  the  first  application  of  the  pressure 
rather  piqued  his  sense  of  the  whimsical — supplied  him 
with  a  genuine  incentive — and  that  at  three-forty  the 
next  morning  he  began  playing  again." 

"He  would  feel  the  pressure.  He  would  react  to  it. 
It  is  unthinkable  that  he  should  not.  You  are  building 
up  a  trivial  allegory  with  your  present  law  system  in 
mind  and  with  all  the  habits  and  impulses  resulting  from 


THE  BUGLE  237 

the  present  law  system  in  mind.  It  is  droll,  but  it  is  not 
reason.  Go  to  the  nature  that  has  no  codes.  Its  liberty 
and  its  resulting  peace  are  perfect." 

"The  jungle!"  I  cried.  "That  is  what  I  see.  I  don't 
see  peace  in  the  jungle.  I  see  the  large  beasts  devour 
ing  the  small  beasts.  I  see  conflict,  selfishness  unre 
strained.  I  see  the  injured — the  most  innocently  injured 
with  the  rest — crowded  to  the  wall.  I  see  life  a  con 
stant  struggle  with  aggression — an  endless  fight  for 
subsistence,  and  classes  —  an  endless  multiplication  of 
classes,  favored  groups,  the  strong  kept  strong  by  their 
strength,  the  puny  kept  puny  by  their  relative  weak 
ness.  That  is  what  I  see  in  codeless  nature.  Then 
along  comes  your  Man.  He  has  an  Idea — after  a  while. 
His  idea  is  that  it  is  foolish  to  spend  his  whole  time  in 
conflict.  He  organizes  himself  and  reaches  agreements. 
Even  before  they  were  written  down  these  agreements 
were  laws.  When  his  group  grew  large  enough,  too 
large  for  his  standing  vote,  he  chose  delegates.  That 
was  a  legislature.  Isn't  it  true  that  your  social  pressure 
must  be  voiced?  Even  if  you  take  our  hundred  million 
— and  Anarchists,  I  assume,  would  multiply — you  must 
have  some  recognized  medium  for  your  social  pressure. 
There  must  be  no  doubt  about  the  voice  or  you  would 
be  spending  your  whole  time  in  a  fruitless  effort  to  find 
out  what  your  sacred  social  pressure  was  saying.  If 
you  could  hear  readily  enough  the  pressure- voice  of  the 
small  group — if  a  quarrel  at  a  corner  as  to  right  of  way 
was  to  be  settled  by  the  elements  of  social  pressure  im 
mediately  at  hand  (and  I  hope  the  voice  wouldn't  be 
fifty-fifty  while  the  whole  crowd  was  halted) — what 
would  you  do  about  a  question  calling  for  a  social- 
pressure  voice  from  the  whole  hundred  million?  You 
couldn't  have  delegates.  You  couldn't  have  a  ballot, 
or  even  a  single  vote-teller  who  would  go  about  among 
the  whole  hundred  million  getting  their  social-pressure 
opinions.  You  couldn't  have  any  social-pressure  ma- 


238  THE   GREAT  DESIRE 

chinery,  for  that  would  be  government.  You  couldn't 
have  a  chairman  for  your  hundred-million  group.  A 
chairman  and  committees  are  what  we  have  now.  We 
call  it  government." 

I  rushed  recklessly  on. 

"You  spoke  a  little  while  ago  about  the  trade-union. 
Hasn't  the  trade-union  a  government?  Could  it  have 
done  the  big  things  it  has  done  without  a  government — 
without  elective  chairmen  and  committees?  And  if 
this  necessity  is  admitted,  is  there  any  way  of  avoiding 
the  chance  that  one  organized  group  will  not  come  in 
conflict  with  another?  And  if  we  have  a  largest  govern 
ment — the  elected  machinery  of  the  total  group — isn't 
it  necessary  that  the  voice  of  all  of  us  should  rule  over 
the  voice  of  some  of  us?  If  forty  per  cent,  of  your  social 
pressure  says  one  thing  and  sixty  per  cent,  says  another, 
has  Anarchism  invented  any  way  out  that  will  rebuke 
neither  majority  nor  minority  or  give  both  what  they 
ask?  And  is  it  reasonable  to  set  aside  order  by  repre 
sentation,  as  in  our  present  system,  because  the  repre- 
senter  is  so  often  stupid?  Isn't  our  government  really 
as  good  as  we  deserve,  considering  the  mood  in  which 
most  of  us  do  the  selecting  of  the  representers?  And 
is  the  cure  no  representing  at  all?  Is  the  alternative 
to  poor  government  no  government?  Is  the  alternative 
to  a  weak  policeman  no  policeman?  Is  the  alternative 
to  a  specific  cruel  rule  of  order  no  rules  of  order?  Is  the 
alternative  to  a  leaky  roof  no  roof?  Is  the  alternative 
to  a  badly  built  track  no  railroads?  Is  the  alternative 
to  a  defectively  voiced  social  pressure  no  voice  for  social 
pressure? 

"If  Anarchism  were  at  once  accepted  for  the  whole 
earth,  wouldn't  you  at  once  have  to  set  up  government? 
Aren't  you  organized  now?  Isn't  your  office,  here,  or 
ganized?  When  you  write  and  lecture  aren't  you  using 
an  organized  language — a  code  of  speech — not  because 
you  may  love  codes,  but  because  you  love  to  be  under- 


THE  BUGLE  239 

stood?  Government  is  the  language  of  social  pressure. 
If  government  is  cruel  it  is  because  the  social  voice  be 
hind  it  is  cruel — and  it  often  is  damnably  so.  The 
Church  is  as  weak  as  the  people  who  don't  go  can  make 
it.  Jails  are  as  bad  as  we  make  them  by  never  looking 
at  their  insides. 

"This  is  the  way  I  see  it:  You  .  .  ." 
"Oh,  you  see  it  tremendously,"  she  said,  sharply. 
"Let  me  get  it  out,"  I  said.  "As  I  see  it,  you  are 
not  only  charging  the  whole  muddle  against  our  present 
method  of  interpreting  what  you  have  called  social 
pressure.  You  are  doing  more  than  that.  You  are  not 
like  the  Socialist  or  the  I.  W.  W.  You  don't  say  to  the 
man  wearing  a  brown  suit,  'If  only  you  would  wear  a 
blue  suit  all  would  be  well.'  With  you  it  seems  to  be 
not  a  question  of  how  your  social  pressure  is  to  clothe 
itself.  You  seem  to  want  it  to  be  naked.  You  won't 
have  any  system.  Your  social  pressure  is  to  be  expressed 
God  knows  how,  without  a  language,  without  a  sign, 
and  your  social  pressure  is,  somehow,  always  to  be  unani 
mous.  Every  one  who  is  not  an  Anarchist  seems  to  have 
discovered  that  a  single  thief  in  New  York  can  impose 
locks  on  two  or  three  million  doors.  You  tell  me  there 
would  be  no  thieves  if  there  were  no  laws.  You  have 
convinced  me  that  you  are  not  joking.  And  right  there 
I  find  you  most  puzzling,  but  most  human.  For  your 
theory  that  no  system  at  all  would  cure  everything  is, 
to  my  thinking,  the  same  thing  as  saying  that  a  differ 
ent  system  would  cure  everything.  I  find  everybody 
ready  to  blame  the  system.  To  admit  that  individual 
human  creatures  might  have  any  defects  seems  to  come 
hard.  If  there  are  weak,  selfish  husbands  and  wives, 
let  us  abolish  marriage.  If  there  are  thieves,  let  us 
abolish  political  office.  If  there  are  hypocrites,  let  us 
abolish  the  Church.  It  is  for  all  the  world  like  lining 
up  a  bunch  of  lame  men  and  crying  out,  'This  system  of 
having  legs  is  a  failure!  Abolish  legs!' 


240  THE   GREAT  DESIRE 

"And  all  this  time  poor  humanity,  blundering  along 
on  the  road  to  that  ideal  of  happiness — " 

"Wait  a  moment,"  she  said,  a  finger  pointed  straight. 
"Wait  a  moment.  You  have  asked  a  great  many  ques 
tions  and  arranged  a  very  pretty  picture  that  is,  I  sup 
pose,  intended  to  present  a  profound  dilemma.  But 
I'm  going  to  content  myself  with  considering  one  word 
you  have  just  spoken.  You  say  *  happiness.'  You  say 
it  as  if  happiness  were  the  imperative.  The  supreme 
need  is  not  happiness — " 

"Then  in  Heaven's  name  what  is  it?"  I  demanded. 

"The  theory  of  happiness  as  the  supreme  need  has 
led  to  all  the  trouble.  The  preposterous  theory  about 
happiness  has  brought  on  the  very  tortures  that  have 
destroyed  the  happiness  of  the  world." 

I  suspected  her  of  knowing  that  I  would  be  puzzled. 
Certainly  I  must  have  reflected  that  condition. 

"With  the  theory  of  happiness  as  the  great  ultimate 
well  in  hand,  authority  rises  up  to  say  how  we  shall 
get  it.  Authority  says,  'I  know  what  will  make  you 
happy.'  It  arranges  its  systems  and  says  to  us,  'Now, 
damn  you,  be  happy!'  Happiness  is  imposed.  It  is  to 
be  clamped  on  like  a  strait- jacket  or  pushed  under  our 
noses  like  an  anesthetic.  Authority  clanks  over  the 
crushed  souls  of  men  to  swing  open  the  gates  of  a  wonder 
ful  cage  in  which  mankind  is  ordered  to  be  happy. 
Shuddering  martyrs  at  the  stake  have  died  because  they 
misread  the  prescription  for  being  happy.  Happiness 
has  been  administered  like  serums  in  an  army.  And 
this  not  merely  by  state  authority,  but  by  the  reflected 
horrors  of  small  group  persecution.  The  family  imitates 
the  state. 

"  No !  A  thousand  times  no !  The  elemental  need  and 
the  ultimate  need  are  not  happiness.  The  elemental 
need,  the  spiritual  imperative,  humanity's  great  de 
sire  .  .  ." 

"Humanity's  great  desire!" 


THE  BUGLE  241 

I  repeated  the  words  in  a  magnetized  curiosity. 

"...  the  utterly  essential  and  imperative  desire  of 
humanity  is  not  happiness,  it  is  self-expression. 

"Do  you  gather  the  differences  lying  in  the  recogni 
tion  of  that  imperative?  Do  you  get  the  difference 
between  a  fundamental  necessity  and — " 

"But  happiness — " 

"Happiness,"  She  gave  it  a  mincing  sound.  "Hap 
piness!  .  .  .  What  is  it?  It  is  a  dream,  a  name,  an 
illusion  ...  at  most,  of  course,  an  effect.  No.  The 
need  for  self-expression,  the  need  lying  in  the  fiber, 
in  the  soul  of  everything  in  that  nature  you  talk  about, 
the  need  written  in  every  living  form  and  every  part 
of  every  living  form,  the  need  sighing,  singing,  gnawing, 
struggling,  aspiring  throughout  the  whole  cycle  of 
created  things,  is  the  need  for  self-expression.  You 
don't  ask  the  flowers  to  be  happy — you  ask  them  to  be 
themselves — each,  utterly  in  its  own  way.  You  don't 
think  you  can  enforce  or  confer  happiness  on  the  natural 
creatures  of  the  world  except  by  letting  them  be  them 
selves.  Man  chatters  about  the  smiling  sky  or  the 
happy  birds  or  whatever  other  fool  patronizing  thing 
comes  into  his  head,  then  turns  about  to  invent  a  new 
kind  of  handcuffs  for  his  species.  About  ninety  per  cent, 
of  his  energies  and  about  an  equal  proportion  of  his 
imaginative  faculties  are  spent  in  devising  and  applying 
intrusions  and  restraints  and  machinery  of  murder. 
And  mind  you,  he  is  always  ready  to  rant  about  happi 
ness.  Oh,  he  has  an  absolutely  incorrigible  devotion  to 
happiness!  He  has  been  ranting  about  it  ever  since 
the  first  slave  collar  was  forged.  But  .  .  .  you  must  be 
happy  as  you  are  told. 

"Your  wretched  word  sums  up  the  whole  case  I  have 
to  offer  you.  I  want  self-expression  rather  than  the 
brass  slave  collar  of  *  happiness.'  There  is  my  sin!  I 
want  self-expression  for  all  the  creatures  of  the  earth 
on  the  terms  they  can  naturally  make — without  diagrams 


242  THE   GREAT  DESIRE 

invented  by  self-appointed  viceroys  of  an  impossible 
god.  I  want  the  mother  to  express  herself  in  a  child, 
though  it  be  with  torture  and  without  rewards  she  ever 
may  label  happiness,  because  that  is  her  self-expression. 
I  want  the  child  to  express  itself  in  its  own  way,  getting 
out  of  itself  the  thing  that  grows  there  and  that  will, 
without  interference,  have  its  natural  beauty,  its  in 
evitable  adjustment  to  the  beauty  of  the  world.  I 
want  the  artist  and  the  laborer  to  express  themselves. 
I  want  each  alike  to  own  the  thing  he  has  made,  and  to 
share  alike  in  the  benefits  to  be  derived  from  what  they 
have  made.  I  want  humanity  to  have  direct  contact 
with  nature  and  with  itself.  I  want  Man  to  be  his  own 
man. 

"This  is  why  I  am  an  Anarchist.  This  is  what 
Anarchism  means.  Every  individual  opposition  to  the 
existing  order  of  things  is  illuminated  by  the  spiritual 
light  of  Anarchism.  It  is  the  philosophy  of  the  sov 
ereignty  of  the  individual.  It  is  the  theory  of  social 
harmony.  It  is  the  great,  surging,  living  truth  that  is 
reconstructing  the  world  and  that  will  usher  in  the 
dawn." 

I  stared  at  the  faintly  flushed  face  of  the  Anarchist 
woman,  conscious  of  a  fascination — and  a  profound 
disturbance. 

"And  this,"  I  said,  "is  the  great  desire  of  those  who 
would  live  without  law." 

"Of  those  who  would  live,"  she  said. 

She  spoke  .  .  . 

XI 

The  nurse  says  that  I  may  write. 

She  accedes  as  if  to  imply  that  my  wish  is  one  of  those 
vagaries  of  the  semi-horizontal  and  but  recently  quite 
horizontal  which  on  the  whole  it  may  be  better  not  to 
thwart. 

She  is  not  a  young  and  beautiful  nurse  such  as  one 


THE  BUGLE  243 

sees  in  pictures.  She  is  plain;  utterly  plain,  except  as 
to  her  eyes,  which  are  big  and  kind.  She  has  no  sense 
of  humor.  Absolutely  none  at  all.  Her  work  shows  all 
the  precision  of  a  person  with  no  sense  of  humor.  Per 
haps  this  characteristic  is  not  unfortunate  in  some  ways. 
In  others  it  is  rather  detrimental;  for  humorless  people 
always  talk  more  than  they  should.  Not  that  her  words 
total  a  great  number.  Her  volubility  is  undoubtedly  an 
effect  rather  than  a  quantity. 

Her  name  is  Brackens. 

She  is  not  the  nurse  I  saw  when  I  opened  my  eyes  to 
the  thing  that  had  happened.  That  was  Miss  Fogarty, 
who  has  a  ruddy  face  and  a  high  bosom.  I  think  that 
Miss  Fogarty  and  the  doctor  people  rather  thought  at 
first  that  I  was  a  hopeless  mess.  The  fact  is,  the  bump 
that  shut  off  the  lights  of  Union  Square  has  scarcely 
left  a  bruise.  And  only  one  wretched  little  bone  is 
broken  in  my  foot.  So  that  there  is  something  grotesque 
about  this  complicated  fussing.  My  foolish  foot  has  be 
come  entangled  in  an  immense  institutional  machine  and 
holds  me  helplessly  to  an  infinite  ritual  of  preservation. 

Miss  Fogarty  had  a  way  of  not  telling  me  what  they 
had  thought  when  I  was  brought  in.  I  guessed  readily 
enough. 

When  my  aunt  arranged  for  the  private  room  I  came 
into  the  hands  of  Miss  Brackens  .  .  .  and  supplementary 
doctors.  All  of  them  interesting,  but  particularly  old 
Karp,  who  is  bald  and  has  a  wen. 

It  was  Karp  who  said,  "The  simple  fact  is  that  you 
are  tough." 

"And  if  I  had  achieved  this  little  hurt  in  a  trench," 
I  said,  "and  you  were  a  soldier  doctor,  you  would 
promise  to  get  me  back  into  the  fight  in  two  weeks, 
wouldn't  you?" 

"Make  it  three,"  said  Karp. 

Probably  I  looked  annoyed.  "Nature  is  very  de 
liberate." 


244  THE   GREAT  DESIRE 

"If  you  had  taken  that  hint  from  nature,"  suggested 
Karp,  "you  wouldn't  have  been  knocked  down  by  an 
auto.'* 

Naturally  people  preach  to  a  man  with  a  plastered 
foot. 

"You  see,"  I  said  to  Karp,  "those  ranters  made  me 
furious  .  .  ." 

"Shouldn't  let  them.  Inciting  fury  is  their  business. 
Why  do  you  suppose  they  go  soap-boxing  and  plat- 
forming?  To  stir  up.  Not  your  kind,  of  course.  The 
riffraff — they  make  a  great  hit  with  the  riffraff.  You 
probably  looked  the  crowd  over.  People  who  won't 
read." 

"But  they  say  print  is  capitalistic." 

"  Bosh !  It  costs  money  to  print  Dame  Nature,  doesn't 
it?  And  The  Herd?  They're  always  howling  for  money, 
these  ranters  against  capital." 

"Have  you  read  them,  doctor — Dame  Nature  and  The 
Herd,  for  example?" 

"  I  don't  want  to.  Skulking  enemies  of  the  Republic, 
that's  what  they  are.  They  are  bacterial — breeding 
discontent  and  active  evil." 

"They're  very  earnest." 

"They're  as  earnest  as  an  assassin!" 

A  pinkness  had  crept  into  Karp's  bald  space. 

"Anyway,"  I  said,  not  without  a  little  friendly  malice, 
"you  can  see  why  I  might  have  been  stirred." 

"That's  why  I  say,  keep  away  from  them.  .  .  .  Stop 
thinking  about  them." 

I  didn't  say  to  Karp  that  just  at  this  juncture  in  the 
world's  affairs  we  can't  "keep  away"  and  "stop  think 
ing."  Things  must  be  thought  out  and  faced  out. 
Unless  the  war  is  to  be  wholly  an  evil  we  must  learn  to 
stop  some  of  our  dishonesties.  Keeping  away  from  cer 
tain  things,  refusing  to  think  about  certain  others, 
turning  our  backs  on  the  "riffraff,"  has  left  us  a  dis 
agreeable  heritage  .  .  .  and  not  a  few  horrors. 


THE  BUGLE  245 

This  came  into  my  mind  when  I  was  walking  home 
ward,  saw  the  crowd,  and  heard  the  crest  notes  in  the 
waves  of  a  voice.  Two  days  before  I  had  seen  Anna 
Jassard,  and  had  left  unfinished  in  this  journal  some 
impressions  of  that  meeting.  The  Anarchist  woman  still 
occupied  my  thoughts,  poignantly  most  of  the  time,  like 
a  sharp  effect  of  indigestion.  There  were  moments  when 
the  memory  taste  was  like  an  opiate,  quieting  ancient 
fevers  of  irritation.  At  others  1  felt  a  strange  uneasi 
ness,  as  if  all  that  had  seemed  solid  ground  were  suddenly 
to  be  suspected  of  a  squirming  unreality.  The  hu 
manizing  of  the  woman  had  somehow  unsettled  every 
thing  else. 

Nevertheless,  I  thought  I  should  never  again  be  so 
easily  trapped  by  a  bigotry. 

I  thought  this  until  I  caught  some  of  the  words  of 
that  speaker  in  the  square. 

Of  a  sudden,  then,  I  found  that  irritations  return. 

It  was  not  the  story  of  Syndicalist  Russia,  in  which 
that  restless  crowd  took  such  evident  satisfaction,  that 
cut  through  my  resolves.  Perhaps  I  shall  never  again 
be  so  sure  about  inevitable  forms.  If  production  armies 
are  to  be  managed  by  the  followers  instead  of  by  the 
leaders,  that  is  a  matter  in  which  results  may  be  awaited. 
But  the  sneers  at  the  United  States  hurt.  The  answer 
ing  murmurs  hurt.  It  hurt  that  this  protest  against 
conscription  should  reveal  a  deep  hatred  of  the  whole 
system  labeled  by  the  flag.  I  shuddered  to  think  of  all 
that  is  hidden  under  the  iron  roof  of  order  ...  of  a  bitter, 
festering  repugnance  toward  the  dream  image  of  a  nation, 
of  the  angry  hands  throwing  insults  at  our  smugly 
visualized  conception  of  Liberty. 

At  Last  out  of  the  long  murmur  of  welcome  came  the 
voice  of  Anna  Jassard.  1  knew  it  at  once,  though  it 
was  lifted  to  a  strident  level. 

Two  girls  stood  beside  me  in  the  crowd.  One  of 
them  was  startlingly  pretty.  Both  were  chewing  gum. 


246  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

At  the  moment  when  the  Anarchist  woman  began  to 
speak,  the  one  who  was  pretty  grunted,  sharply,  "I 
hope  to  Christ  she  soaks  'em." 

I  fancy  the  girl  was  disappointed.  Anna  Jassard 
picked  her  way  with  amazing  caution.  She  preached 
no  resistance  to  the  United  States  of  America.  It  was 
almost  as  if  she  had  loftily  cried,  "Render  unto 
Csesar  .  .  ."  Yet  I  could  feel  as  by  a  physical  pressure 
the  passionate  rebellion  behind  that  voice;  I  could  feel 
the  answering  throb  in  the  body  of  that  crowd.  The 
incident  was  a  huge  sarcasm.  One  of  the  foremost  eulo 
gists  of  "direct"  methods  was  administering,  in  the 
.guise  of  rejoicing  for  liberated  humanity,  an  indirect 
incitement  to  individual  protest.  The  thing  that  was 
happening  in  the  speaker  was  happening  in  the  crowd 
.  .  .  alert,  stealthy  rebellion  against  an  imminent  proc 
ess  of  the  System.  Deans  and  tutors,  men  in  pulpits 
and  in  press  galleries,  are  doing  the  same  thing  .  .  . 
surging  furtively  against  the  barriers  .  .  .  bickering  and 
squirming  in  the  face  of  a  mass  necessity  that  will  refuse 
to  be  scowled  down,  that  must  refuse  to  be  scowled  down 
if  it  is  to  get  anything  done. 

As  muffled  rebellion  one  might  have  taken  it  for 
granted.  But  in  the  red  glare  from  the  East,  in  this 
hour  of  anxious  hush,  the  spectacle  had  the  feel  of  a  thinly 
shielded  fire.  Words  scorched  like  scattering  cinders. 

I  realize  now  that  my  fury  was  out  of  all  proportion 
to  anything  said.  I  only  know  that  the  crowd  suddenly 
became  monstrous  .  .  .  that  the  speaker  suddenly  seemed 
to  issue  as  a  prodigious  menace,  flinging  purple  poisons, 
cooing  like  a  witch,  and  flashing  the  blade  of  subtle 
assassination. 

I  am  not  sure  as  to  the  passage  in  her  speech  that 
drew  me  in  at  last. 

"Yes  ..."  I  was  shouting  it  at  the  utmost  of  my 
voice  as  if  to  cut  a  way  through  the  crowd  ..."  Yes, 
but  how  about  the  women  and  children  of  Belgium?" 


THE  BUGLE  247 

My  shout  did  actually  make  a  cleft  in  the  crowd. 
The  two  girls  beside  me  shrank  away,  staring.  I  be 
came  conscious  of  the  lane  of  faces  running  between  me 
and  the  woman. 

"Have  you  no  decent  name,"  I  bellowed,  "for  those 
who  go  to  the  rescue?  Is  there  no  difference  between 
the  blow  of  a  murderer  and  the  blow  of  a  defender? 
Is  there  no  such  thing  as  righteous  force  in  your 
world?" 

The  shifting  of  many  feet  and  a  guttural  murmur, 
punctuated  with  sarcastic  laughter,  drowned  me  at  the 
end,  .  .  .  and  the  woman  was  holding  up  her  hand  while 
her  eyes  singled  me  out.  I  knew,  despite  the  blinding 
excitement  of  my  own  noises,  that  she  recognized  me. 

"I  will  tell  you  .  .  ."  Her  voice  arose  above  the  mur 
mur  and  stilled  it.  "I  will  tell  you  .  .  ." 

But  I  knew  that  I  was  no  heckler.  It  was  not  realiza 
tion  that  turned  me  about.  Perhaps  it  was  plain  cow 
ardice  added  to  the  sense  of  a  futility.  I  felt  enveloped 
by  resentment,  drawn  in  a  murky  tide.  I  struck  out, 
plunging  back  through  the  outer  wash  of  the  crowd 
.  .  .  more  laughter  following  me  into  the  open  Square. 

Then  came  the  car.  I  spun  half  about.  But  not 
quickly  enough. 

xn 

Looked  at  from  a  bed,  Sarah  has  presented  a  won 
derful  picture.  It  was  interesting  to  fancy  her  as  a 
nurse — what  a  bedeviling  phantom  she  would  become! 
Add  a  special  sympathy  in  those  eyes  of  hers  and  you 
have  magic  at  its  meridian. 

There  was  a  little  of  breathlessness  when  first  she  came 
.  .  .  reaching  for  me  with  her  look,  and  very  discreetly 
and  composedly  taking  my  hand  to  say,  "Well,  old  man, 
hard  luck!"  She  knew  better  than  to  make  much  of 
the  affair.  There  was  nothing  heroic  in  it. 

Aunt  Paul  said:   "It  was  so  original  of  you,  Anson, 


248  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

not  to  be  killed.  You  have  had  all  the  emotions — the 
'lights  went  out/  as  you  say — yet  here  you  are  with 
only  a  plastered  warning.  Really,  it  was  downright 
clever." 

"Downright  agility,"  I  said,  finding  a  new  position  for 
my  foot. 

She  brought  a  funny  yarn  yesterday  about  a  remark 
by  a  man  who  was  run  over  .  .  .  also  a  jar  of  a  certain 
marmalade. 

My  glance  at  the  jar  induced  her  to  laugh. 

"It  will  help  make  you  feel  at  home,"  she  suggested. 

"You  act,"  I  said,  "as  if  I  had  had  a  fever  or  a  baby 
or  something." 

"Call  it  anything  you  like  so  long  as  you  make  up 
your  mind  to  sit  back  for  a  while.  What  does  the 
doctor-man  say?" 

"He  says  I  am  tough." 

"With  a  brittle  spot,  like  Achilles.  Very  well.  I'll 
take  you  home  as  soon  as  you  can  hobble." 

"You  wanted  to  beat  me  to  that  suggestion,"  I  said. 

"I  wanted  to  keep  you  from  being  restless." 

"Don't  you  know,"  I  said,  shaking  a  finger  at  her, 
"that  the  world  is  all  wrong?  That  nobody  should  be 
coerced  into  doing  anything — that  each  of  us  must  do 
precisely  as  he  chooses — that  there  shouldn't  be  any 
traffic  cops  or  soldiers  or  conscriptions  or  brutal  in 
trusions  or  restraints  of  any  kind — ?" 

"I  see,"  said  my  aunt,  with  a  grin.  "It  was  a  sort 
of  foot-note  to  all  that,  wasn't  it!" 

"  Very  kind  of  you  to  sit  there  making  puns  of  my  mis 
fortune,  but  it  hurts  like  the  deuce  sometimes.  I  mean 
the  foot." 

One  has  to  growl  a  little  to  one's  aunt.  .  .  . 

With  my  mother  it  was  different.  She  pretended  that 
she  had  run  down  to  the  city  not  because  my  affair 
really  was  serious,  but  because  it  was  about  time  for  a 
little  visit.  She  wanted  to  see  what  the  Red  Cross 


THE  BUGLE  249 

people  were  doing  and  perhaps  to  carry  back  with  her 
something  inspiring  from  the  spectacle  of  the  work  on 
a  big  scale.  She  has  taken  my  bed  in  the  apartment 
and  has  had  a  droll  way  of  saying  that  I  must  not  hurry 
the  time  of  leaving  the  hospital,  as  this  would  cut  short 
her  visit. 

The  same  dear  old  Mother — the  same  dear  young 
Mother.  Why  do  artists  always  give  Mother  such  a 
dreadfully  grandmotherly  appearance,  when  they  don't 
suggest  the  great-grandmotherly? 

She  seemed  to  make  the  air  electric  with  her  en 
thusiasm.  She  was  enthusiastic  even  about  my  foot — 
such  a  remarkable  foot  not  to  be  broken  more  and  to 
be  so  quickly  mending.  She  is  enthusiastic  about  the 
prodigious  things  the  United  States  is  going  to  do  in 
the  war. 

"Your  father,"  she  said,  "is  beginning  to  count  up 
the  Academy  boys  who  are  in  the  Service.  It's  a  won 
derful  list." 

Ah  yes !    And  his  own  boy.  .  .  . 

Zorn  came  with  a  queer,  anxious  frown.  There  was 
something  wrong  with  his  tie,  as  if  he  had  been  inter 
rupted  in  the  act  of  getting  it  on.  He  was  transparently 
pleased  to  discover  that  I  seemed  to  be  in  my  right 
mind  and  approximately  assembled.  It  occurred  to 
him  to  read  a  couple  of  Rudley's  letters.  I  think  that 
for  a  moment  he  intended  to  read  a  third.  Possibly  I 
shall  hear  this  later.  1  wondered  whether  my  situation 
helped  any  psychic  faculty  and  whether  I  was  right  in 
feeling  that  the  letter  he  didn't  read  was  one  in  which 
Rudley  acknowledged  Zorn's  stroke  of  benevolence. 
Afterward  the  impression  seemed  not  to  imply  any 
psychic  faculty  whatever.  It  was  plainly  a  natural 
guess. 

Suddenly  Zorn  said,  "Did  they  arrest  the  driver?" 

"Yes,"  I  said,  "so  I  have  understood.  That  was 
wrong.  He  had  all  the  right  of  it." 


250  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Zorn  frowned  contentedly.  "Now  I  know  that  you 
aren't  really  hurt." 

Presently  he  added,  "I'm  going  to  move." 

"And  stop  being  my  neighbor?" 

"Stop  being  your  next-door  neighbor,  yes.  But  I 
sha'n't  be  so  far  from  you — once  again  over  Stuyvesant 
Square  way.  You  shall  visit  me  often,  I  hope.  A  snug 
little  place.  Without  Robert,  you  know,  that  apart 
ment  is  foolish — and  an  extravagance.  When  he  comes 
back  .  .  ." 

He  didn't  finish  the  sentence. 

"I  shall  be  one  of  your  earliest  callers  at  the  new 
place,"  1  said. 

"Not  until  the  foot  is  quite  well.  You  have  been 
wounded — " 

"And  not  for  my  country!"  I  said,  crabbedly.     "I—" 

"Perhaps  we  shouldn't  say  that,"  Zorn  flashed  back, 
with  a  checking  action  of  the  long  hand.  "I  know  how 
you  feel.  It  doesn't  seem  heroic — " 

"I'm  not  eager  to  be  heroic,"  I  protested.  "But  one 
hates  to  be  idiotic — " 

"Nevertheless,  Mr.  Philosopher,  you  weren't  about 
such  a  bad  business,  as  I  make  it  out.  Voices  as  well  as 
guns  are  going  to  be  needed  before  this  war  is  over." 

"I  know,"  1  said.  "The  business  may  not  have  been 
any  worse  than  futile.  I'm  not  entirely  ashamed  of 
howling  in  the  Square.  But  I  didn't  need  to  lose  my 
head  afterward." 

" Never  mind,"  returned  Zorn,  with  his  grimace.  "  You 
seem  to  have  picked  it  up  again." 

It  was  just  after  Zorn  had  gone  that  Miss  Brackens 
handed  me  an  envelop.  The  fragment  of  paper  inside 
had  this  in  pencil: 

May  I  see  you  for  a  moment? 

ANNA  JASSARD. 


THE  BUGLE  251 

No  nurse  in  the  world,  if  she  knew  it,  would  let  any 
patient  in  the  world  see  a  visitor  whose  announcement 
was  so  appalling  as  this  seemed  at  that  first  instant. 

"Miss  Brackens,"  I  said,  with  stupendous  firmness, 
"will  you  please  tell  this  lady  that  I  am  very  sorry? 
.  .  .  No.  Wait  a  moment.  .  .  .  Tell  her  I'm  very  glad 
.  .  .  that  I  should  like  to  see  her." 

And  I  have  paraded  myself  before  myself  as  incor 
rigibly  logical! 

XIII 

"You  know,"  said  Anna  Jassard,  "I  was  a  nurse  once 
— a  long  time  ago." 

I  looked  at  her — intently,  as  if  to  get  through  the  sur 
face  of  her  and  find  the  ministering  one.  She  sat  be 
side  the  bed  in  an  attitude  of  utter  quiet.  That  chin 
seemed  modified — to  be  not  at  all  the  chin  of  that  street 
meeting.  Her  face  looked  again  as  it  had  looked  when 
we  began  talking  at  her  table.  Yet  the  ministering  one 
was  not  visible.  The  fighter  unarmed — that  was  what 
I  saw.  She  had  said,  "a  long  time  ago." 

"If  you  have  been  a  nurse,"  I  said,  "you  know  that 
the  only  matter  we  could  talk  about  would  beget  con 
ditions  very  bad  for  the  patient." 

"I  have  been  a  patient,  too,"  she  said,  "and  I  know 
that  certain  things  do  not  hurt.  For  example,  it  doesn't 
hurt  to  know  how  sorry  any  one  may  be.  It  won't 
hurt  to  tell  you  that  I  didn't  speak  twenty  words  after 
you  had  gone,  for  I  knew  that  something  had  happened. 
I  couldn't  go  on.  They  told  me  that  my  challenger  had 
been  knocked  down  by  a  car.  I  had  a  way  of  finding 
out  how  it  was  with  you  here — that  it  was  not  a  danger 
ous  matter.  I  have  had  news  since.  To-day  I  wanted 
to  see  you — to  say  just  this  much,  and  to  assure  myself 
that — that  you  are  going  to  be  all  right." 

If  she  didn't  mean  this  she  is  a  consummate  deceiver. 
But  I  couldn't  feel  that  the  fact  was  of  any  importance. 


252  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

She  is  hitman,  and  I  believe  she  is  honest.  She  may  be 
one  of  the  kindest  persons  in  the  world.  The  man  who 
sank  the  Lusitania  probably  never  committed  a  private 
murder.  Mere  sedition  may  well  reek  with  altruistic 
emotion.  .  .  . 

She  was  standing  now  and  looking  down  at  me  with 
that  dreadful  patience. 

"Thank  you  for  coming,"  I  said,  blankly.  She  under 
stood.  She  understands  everything  personal — every 
thing  except  the  All-of-Us  idea. 

"If  you  will  say  what  you  are  thinking  .  .  ." 

"  I  am  thinking  that  I  am  your  host  and  that  I  mustn't 
say  what  I  am  thinking." 

"Better  get  it  said,"  she  went  on.  "It  will  do  you 
good." 

"You  mean  that  it  wouldn't  hurt  you — that  you're 
going  straight  on  with  this  business." 

"I  mean  that  we're  both  trying  to  express  ourselves 
truthfully  and  fairly." 

"Perhaps  it  was  like  this,"  I  said.  .  .  .  "That  what 
you  said  at  the  meeting  was  only  remotely  connected 
with  what  happened  to  me.  Really  not  connected  at 
all.  My  stupidity  was  a  purely  personal  exploit  re 
sulting  in  my  being  gathered  up  by  the  System  you 
hate,  and  carried  here.  .  .  ." 

"I  don't  hate  anything  kind  in  any  system." 

"...  But  the  sort  of  thing  you  people  were  saying  will 
make  a  lot  of  difference  to  thousands  of  men  who  are 
doing  real  things.  It  will  help  tear  the  hearts  out  of 
them  and  scatter  then*  bodies  ...  in  frightful  frag 
ments.  .  .  ." 

She  shook  her  head  slowly. 

"It  is  because  we  don't  want  hearts  to  be  torn 
out—" 

"I  know,  I  know!    But  that's  what  it  will  do!" 

"Good-by!"  she  said.  "Will  you  shake  hands?  You 
know,  my  heart  may  have  to  be  torn  also." 


THE  BUGLE  253 

"Good-by!"  I  heard  her  walking  quickly  down  the 
corridor. 

XIV 

Having  the  Anarchist  woman  come  might  have  ap 
peared  like  the  climactic  thing.  But  to-day — to-day, 
after  my  fat  aunt  promised  me  that  I  might  to-morrow 
begin  enjoying  at  home  the  remainder  of  my  little  calam 
ity — I  had  the  real  surprise. 

When  Miss  Brackens,  with  the  faint  flame  of  maidenly 
curiosity  burning  in  her  seasoned  professional  eyes,  said, 
"Miss  Sherrick,"  I  am  sure  the  reaction  must  have  af 
forded  her  a  real  reward  for  the  attention. 

"Miss  Sherrick?"  Very  likely  it  had  a  do-you-mean- 
that?  sound. 

Miss  Brackens  nodded  and  wondered.  I  am  now  no 
sort  of  an  anxiety  and  she  is  enjoying  with  a  purely 
elemental  playfulness  the  scrutiny  of  my  phases.  One 
could  read  quite  easily  in  her  face  the  thought  that  this 
Sherrick  person,  whoever  she  was,  had  made  a  definite 
impression. 

I  was  incredulous  up  to  the  moment  when  Laura  came 
to  the  door  of  the  white  room,  until  she  stood  there 
questioningly  ...  or  defiantly — which  was  it?  I  asked 
myself. 

It  seems  now  rather  droll  that  I  should  have  met  the 
Anarchist  so  boldly  and  that  here  I  winced  in  a  kind  of 
stage  fright  before  this  so  much  milder  image.  At  least 
I  knew  what  I  wanted  to  say  to  Anna  Jassard.  For 
Laura  I  had  no  words.  I  was  dumfounded.  If  my 
aunt  is  right,  everything  I  felt  was  written  for  my  visitor 
to  read,  as  plainly  as  on  a  printed  sheet. 

"I  don't  blame  you  for  being  astonished,"  said  Laura. 

I  was  glad  she  didn't  say  it  gingerly,  in  a  sick-room 
spirit. 

"To  take  away  all  the  mystery,  I  heard  of  it  last  night 
from  Lawrence  Pine." 


254  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

Pine,  of  course.  I  had  forgotten  Pine,  though  he 
was  here  twice,  and  behaved  beautifully. 

"You  look,"  said  Laura,  "as  if  that  didn't  take  away 
all  the  mystery." 

"My  looks  are  a  nuisance,"  I  said. 

She  laughed,  and  just  as  a  piece  of  music  it  was  as 
perfect  as  the  color  of  those  outrageously  blue  eyes  of 
hers.  Everything  about  her  made  me  hate  to  stumble 
upon  nything  disagreeable.  I  wished  she  would  go 
and  leave  me  t^e  image  and  the  laugh. 

Yet  I  knew  that  she  would  stay  until  something  hap 
pened.  ...  I  could  see  Sarah  standing  at  that  apartment 
door  and  turning  to  me  her  white  chagrin  and  dismay. 
The  other  door,  and  Laura  going  through  to  Rudley — I 
saw  that  door  by  which  she  was  to  be  shut  out.  .  .  . 

"But  you  are  better,  and  you're  going  to  be  quite  all 
right?"  she  said  from  her  chair. 

"Quite  all  right." 

"Will  you  let  me  say  something?"  she  said,  her  knees 
crossed  and  chin  in  hand.  "I  know  you  think  I'm 
queer.  You  may  have  been  kind  enough  to  wonder 
why  I  disappeared." 

"I  did  wonder." 

"Of  course  I  sh;uld  have  written  some  sort  of  word 
to  Sarah.  You  see,  it  is  quite  a  story.  I  sha'n't  bother 
you  with  it  now.  Besides,  I  really  mustn't.  The  part 
I  mustn't  tell  is  a  government  secret." 

"As  bad  as  that?"  I  said,  incredulously. 

"It  is  because  it  is  that  kind  of  a  story  that  I  had  to 
disappear." 

"You  are  becoming  very  melodramatic,"  I  said. 

She  laughed  again. 

"It  has  seemed  that  way  to  me  more  than  once.  I 
guess  that  it  was  a  melodramatic  decision  I  made — 
that  I  had  to  make.  I  found  out  that  those  people  I 
was  with — as  secretary,  you  know — were  busy  in  an  ugly 
way  .  .  .  about  the  war  .  .  .  about  the  United  States.  I 


THE  BUGLE  &>5 

think  you  know  that  I  was  against  the  war,  against 
everything  about  it.  But  I'm  an  American,  too." 

"I'm  glad  of  that,"  I  said. 

"Of  course  you're  glad.  Well,  I  couldn't  go  on.  Be 
sides  all  that,  I  became  a  bit  frightened.  They  had  been 
very  kind,  those  rascals.  I  thought  it  best  to  run 
away.  I  packed  myself  off  to  an  old  uncle  in  Virginia, 
*  leaving  no  trace,'  as  the  Germans  say.  At  least  I 
thought  I  left  no  trace.  1  didn't  want  to  be  questioned, 
and  I  knew  that  in  other  cases  there  had  been  a  good 
deal  of  questioning.  Then  one  day  a  very  nice  soft- 
spoken  chap  with  an  innocent-looking  mustache  met  me 
on  the  main  street  of  my  uncle's  stupid  old  town.  He 
told  me  without  any  quibbling  that  I  had  been  followed, 
that  the  government  had  some  unpleasant  but  absolutely 
imperative  things  to  do  that  would  necessitate  my 
assistance." 

"Good  heavens!"  I  exclaimed.     "You  were  in  for  it." 

"Well,  the  rest  of  the  story  I  had  better  not  say  any 
thing  about,  even  to  a  patriot  who  gets  himself  hurt 
denouncing  sedition." 

"Denouncing  your  friends  the  Anarchists,"  I  amended. 

"Poor  Anna  Jassard!  I'm  afraid  they  will  get  her 
yet." 

"I'm  afraid  they  will  have  to,"  I  said,  unable  to  re 
strain  a  gesture.  "I'm  sorry.  I  like  her.  She  was 
here  to  see  me — " 

"To  see  you?  Lawrence  Pine  told  me  about  your 
meeting  her — " 

"  Yes.  She  saw  what  happened.  I  think  she's  honest. 
But  her  doctrine  won't  fit  into  a  war  time.  It's  out  of 
key.  It's  sabotage.  You  know  sabotage  is  called  a 
religion  by  the  *  direct  action'  people.  Until  the  war  is 
over  .  .  ." 

"I  know."  Laura  looked  sadly  through  the  near 
window. 

"You  Individualists  ..."  I  began. 


256  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Anson  Grayl!"  she  cried,  suddenly  leaning  intently 
toward  me  and  putting  a  hand  on  the  arm  of  my  chair. 
"What  is  the  matter?  You  don't  hate  me  as  an  Indi 
vidualist  or  anything  of  the  kind.  You're  not  miffed  as 
the  brother  of  a  girl  whose  friend  had  to  disappear  for 
very  good  reasons,  or  even  for  no  reasons.  There  is 
something  else.  What  is  it?" 

"Women  have  wonderful  imaginations,"  I  said. 

"It  doesn't  require  great  gifts  to  see  what  I  see." 

"What  do  you  see?" 

"I  see  that  something  is  wrong." 

"A  great  many  things  are  wrong,"  I  said.  "The  world 
is  sick." 

"  Oh,  bother  the  world !  I'm  thinking  about  .  .  .  our 
selves.  Right  here  and  now." 

"We  shouldn't  do  so  much  of  that,"  I  said,  smugly. 
"We  should  be  wiser  to  think  of  greater  matters — for 
example,  of  those  who  are  over  there  fighting  for  us." 

"Good  God!"  she  cried,  an  astonishing  color  surging 
into  her  cheeks,  "don't  you  suppose  I  am  doing  that? 
Don't  you  suppose  I'm  thinking  of  Robert  .  .  .?" 

She  halted  abruptly. 

"Robert  Rudley?" 

"Robert  Rudley.     Isn't  he  worth  thinking  of?" 

"They  all  are  worth  thinking  of.  ...  He  will  do  big 
things.  I  believe  it.  I  sha'n't  chide  you  for  thinking 
of  him.  I  couldn't  know  .  .  ." 

She  drew  back,  peering  at  me  with  a  queer,  kindled 
look.  Her  lips  twisted  in  reflection  of  an  emotional 
struggle.  She  put  a  hand  to  her  hair,  then  clasped  her 
fingers  in  her  lap.  The  glow  of  her  was  so  different  from 
anything  I  had  seen  in  any  earlier  scrutiny  that  I  sat  in 
a  stupor  of  incredulity,  with  something  uneasily  expect 
ant  plucking  at  my  insides. 

Her  hands  were  flung  wide  as  I  remembered  them  in 
her  summing  up  of  New  York  as  "a  dear  old  fool,"  and 
she  came  out  with  it. 


THE  BUGLE  257 

"Of  course  it's  silly  that  you  shouldn't  know  he  is 
my  brother." 

"Your  .  .  .  Robert  Rudley  your  brother?" 

Her  smiling  relief  gave  her  a  new  effect  that  might 
have  been  interesting  in  itself,  but  that  came  to  me 
mostly  as  a  huge  irritation. 

My  first  impression — it  may  be  my  last — was  of  hav 
ing  been  needlessly  tricked.  I  could  see  only  a  fantas 
tic  blunder  and  useless  belittling  anxieties  all  growing 
out  of  a  trick — a  juvenile  whimsicality  without  possible 
palliation  used  to  trap  and  confuse  and  humiliate  others. 
A  recollection  of  Sarah's  face  at  that  door  made  the 
face  now  before  me  seem  cruelly  insensible  to  its  crime. 

Probably  I  looked  rather  dull.  I  was  indifferent  to 
any  explanation.  I  was  sure  that  there  could  be  no 
explanation  that  would  be  adequate.  I  was  sure  that 
any  analysis  must  add  disfigurement  to  the  already  ugly 
fact — if  it  was  a  fact,  A  preposterous,  selfish  theatrical 
trick. 

"Are  you  sorry?"  demanded  Laura. 

"A  moment  ago,"  I  said,  "we  used  the  word  melo 
dramatic.  I  had  no  idea  then  that  anything  so  aston 
ishingly  stagy  .  .  ." 

"Please  go  on!"  she  exclaimed.  "Say  something 
nasty.  I  want  some  one  to  say  something  nasty.  It 
will  be  a  satisfaction.  You  can't  overdo  it,  really.  I 
have  no  doubt  you  are  precisely  the  one  to — " 

"To  say  it  in  the  nastiest  way?" 

"To  give  it  the  punishing  name.  Whatever  you 
say  will  be  mild  compared  to  what  I  have  said  of  it 
myself." 

"It  is  true,  then?     This  is  not  another  trick?" 

She  winced  without  removing  her  eyes  from  mine. 

"Of  course  it  is  true!" 

"And  why  are  you  telling  me.  .  .  .?" 

"I  don't  know  .  .  .  except  that  his  going  away  has 
changed  everything — me  into  the  bargain.  And  some- 


253  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

how  all  the  little  personal  things  begin  to  look  different 
to  ine.  I  don't  know  that  I  can  explain  it." 

"It  is  the  war." 

"That  may  be.     But  everything  is  different." 

She  arose,  walked  over  to  the  window,  and  stared  into 
the  street.  The  sun  slanted  across  the  old  blue  and  vio 
let  of  her  spring  hat  and  splashed  into  the  creamy  round 
of  her  neck.  Through  the  V  of  her  gown  I  could  see 
that  she  was  breathing  deeply.  The  difference  that  was 
affecting  her  seemed  to  be  shining  in  the  visible  form. 
She  may  not  be  sobered,  but  she  is  softened.  As  she 
stood  there,  sprinkled  with  the  pale  gold  of  the  sunlight, 
her  eyes  narrowed  over  the  liquid  blue,  her  lips  parted 
as  if  to  draw  a  new  purpose  from  the  sky  or  to  release 
the  burden  of  pent  emotions.  I  seemed  for  the  first 
time  to  be  seeing  her  as  a  woman  creature  with  a  sad 
and  beautiful  lonesomeness  coloring  her  pride,  her  eager 
ness,  her  struggling  individualism. 

Though  the  interval  was  of  but  a  few  moments,  it 
sufficed  to  admit,  like  a  flood  of  hot  metal  into  the  mold, 
the  Zorn  story  of  her  girlhood.  Brief  as  the  story  had 
been,  it  seemed  suddenly  to  fill  the  space  of  past  days, 
though  it  left  so  much  of  newer  motive  unexplained, 
and  so  greatly  accentuated  the  present  mystery  of  that 
silhouette  against  the  sick-room  wall.  It  was  easy  to 
be  sorry  for  the  daughter  of  such  a  father,  but  sympathy 
can  be  critical.  It  evaporates  at  a  point.  I  suppose 
some  of  the  things  I  had  said  about  her  were  kicking 
around  in  my  mind. 

"Why  don't  you  say  something?" 

She  turned  upon  me  with  a  flashing  look. 

"I  was  thinking,"  I  said. 

"I  wish  you  would  say  it.  I'm  sure  you  are  wrong. 
How  could  you  think  rightly?  You  don't  know.  You 
sit  there  theorizing  about  me.  .  .  ." 

"I  know  some  things,"  I  said.  "Yet  I'm  fright 
fully  ignorant  about  you.  I  don't  know,  for  example, 


THE  BUGLE  259 

whether  your  changed  name  means  that  you  have 
married." 

"My  changed  name  means  nothing  of  the  sort.  I 
took  my  mother 's  name." 

"You  make  me  feel  as  if  I  were  cross-examining  you, 
and  I  have  no  right  or  desire  to  do  that.  I  wish  you 
wouldn't  jump  at  me.  Can't  you  see  that  I'm  con 
valescing?" 

"Oh,  come!"  she  flung  at  me,  seating  herself  again. 
I  know  what  you're  thinking." 

"Go  ahead,  then.  If  you  say  it  I  sha'n't  be  respon 
sible." 

"You've  figured  me  out  as  a  wayward  person — one 
of  the  modern  freaks — I  could  tell  by  the  way  you  looked 
at  me  that  first  night." 

I  insisted  that  this  had  been  admiring  curiosity. 

"Rot!  It  wasn't  contemptuous,  exactly,  but  it 
was  combative.  You  were  rather  against  me.  You 
know  that.  By  the  way,  you  said  just  now  that  you 
knew  some  things.  What  do  you  know?" 

"Are  you  acquainted  with  Mr.  Zorn?" 

"The  man  who  had  the  apartment  with  Robert?  I 
never  saw  him." 

It  was  thus  that  I  came  to  tell  Zorn's  story.  She 
listened  with  an  intentness  that  made  me  stumble  more 
than  once.  To  see  the  weight  of  every  word  making 
its  mark  was  like  writing  with  a  pyrographic  needle.  It 
forced  me  to  the  baldest  sort  of  narrative.  Besides,  much 
of  it  was  her  own  story.  I  could  feel  that  she  was  com 
paring  it  with  the  acrid  circumstances  as  she  knew  them, 
that  my  fumbling  recital  was  stirring  long-quieted  emo 
tions.  I  could  see  her  going  back,  and  returning  again 
to  what  I  was  saying.  And  what  I  was  saying  was  as 
soon  over  as  possible. 

Curiously,  the  thing  that  trailed  off  at  the  end  was  a 
sense  on  my  part  not  of  anything  trivial  in  the  family 
cataclysm — I  hope  my  own  more  comfortable  upbring- 


260  THE   GREAT  DESIRE 

ing  will  never  make  me  insensible  to  the  acute  pain  of 
such  tragedies — but  of  an  inadequacy  in  the  whole 
affair,  bad  as  it  was,  as  explaining  the  escapade  of  the 
chucked-out  daughter.  I  found  myself  getting  ready 
to  resent  her  explanation  of  that  changed  name  and  her 
denial  of  her  brother.  For  I  felt  quite  clearly  that  she 
had  done  the  denying.  And  all  this  while  the  sheer 
beauty  of  her  was  like  an  embarrassing  white  flame. 

I  knew  at  the  end  that  there  was  to  be  no  tirade 
of  justification,  no  odious  plea  for  understanding.  I 
wasn't  quite  prepared  for  her  next  move. 

She  let  me  finish  without  interruption  and  sat  for 
several  seconds  without  a  word. 

Then  she  remarked  steadily,  "I  believe  this  person 
Zorn  might  understand." 

She  could  scarcely  have  said  more  pointedly  that  she 
was  doubtful  of  me. 

"I'm  sure  of  it,"  I  said. 

"He  would  see  it  all — even  the  foolish  part.  I  want 
to  know  him." 

"He  will  be  tremendously  glad  to  meet  you.  I'm 
sure  of  that.  And  astounded — if  he  hasn't  known — " 

"Known  what?" 

"That — that  Robert's  sister  was  so  near  him." 

"He  wouldn't  know  that.  Robert  wouldn't  have 
told  him.  .  .  .  No,  he  wouldn't  speak  of  it." 

"I  assume,"  said  I,  "that  this  was  not  because  he 
had  a  passionate  love  for  mystery." 

"No  one  had!"  she  cried,  with  a  stiffening  gesture. 
"It  happened  and  it  had  to  go  through.  Robert  under 
stood.  He  was  pledged.  You  would  think  it  absurd. 
Maybe  it  was.  But  he  understood.  Even  after  all  this 
time — just  back  here  in  December.  ...  I  was  in  that 
apartment — " 

"I  know." 

"You  know?  ...  Of  course  it  was  possible.  I  knew 
that.  I  took  the  chance.  You  saw  me?" 


THE  BUGLE  261 

"Sarah  saw  you." 

"Sarah  .  .  .?" 

This  melted  her — and  rather  finished  me. 

"I  thought  it  best  to  tell  you  that,"  I  said,  "because 
I  want  you  to  go  to  Sarah  before  you  do  another  thing. 
Knowing  it,  you  will  understand  some  things  better." 

She  stood  up  as  if  shaking  clear  of  a  burden.  A  differ 
ent  look  came  through  her  wet  lashes. 

"I'm  going,"  she  said,  extending  a  hand  crisply. 

"Though  you  haven't  really  explained  anything  to 
me,"  I  said. 

She  had  given  my  fingers  a  vigorous  clasp  and  moved 
away.  She  turned  for  a  moment.  "Explain?  What's 
the  good  of  explaining?  The  big  thing  is  that  I'm 
through  with  this  damnable  subterfuge.  Can't  you  see 
that?  Besides,  we've  talked  too  much.  I'm  a  brute. 
Good-by!" 

By  now  she  has  seen  Sarah. 

18 


PART    SIX 

The  Burden 


TO  be  back  again  in  the  old  room  where  I  can  look 
out  upon  Felicia's  window  and  sometimes  see  Felicia 
herself  is  to  feel  that  one  dissonance  at  least  has 
melted  in  the  flow  of  established  harmony.  Mother's 
threat  to  run  home  when  I  should  leave  the  hospital  was 
not  carried  out,  because  Aunt  Portia  Rowning  intervened 
with  a  gracious  invitation  to  Park  Avenue,  where  mother 
is  never  happy,  except  for  the  space  of  talk-times  with 
her  brother,  but  where  she  achieves  a  certain  charac 
teristic  amusement  in  watching  the  wheels  of  my  aunt 
Portia's  feverish  machinery. 

The  invitation  seems  the  more  gracious  when  you  stop 
to  think  of  this  crisis  in  Aunt  Portia's  career;  for  just 
at  the  time  when  the  United  States,  government  and 
people,  are  looking  to  my  aunt  for  guidance  in  the  mat 
ter  of  the  war,  with  something  bewildered  and  implor 
ing  in  their  solicitude,  here  comes  a  fresh  crisis  in  suf 
frage.  Portia  Masterson  Rowning  is  convinced  that 
the  unscrupulous  suffrage  crowd  is  bent  on  some  su 
preme,  irretrievable  deviltry  when  she  isn't  looking. 
So  that  she  is  obliged  to  conduct  the  war  with  eyes  con 
stantly  alert  for  the  sex  treason  that  would  deliver  the 
women  of  New  York,  and  Heaven  knows  how  many 
other  new  states,  to  the  abysmal  horrors  of  voting.  I 
have  no  doubt  there  is  something  exhilarating  in  the 
very  complexity  of  these  protective  functions.  My  aunt 
is  like  one  of  those  prodigies  of  the  telephone  switch 
board  who  never  come  out  strong  until  a  horde  of  voices 


THE  BURDEN  263 

is  clamoring  for  connections.  You  read  of  girls  who, 
when  the  town  or  the  building  is  on  fire,  calmly  call  up 
the  pivotal  persons  and  institutions,  summon,  warn, 
head  off,  and  adjust  until  the  chair  burns  under  them. 
There  you  have  a  picture  of  my  aunt,  with  the  world 
ablaze,  coolly  articulating  the  bones  of  the  body  politic, 
performing  miracles  of  administration,  and  incidentally 
blocking  would-be  looters  of  the  ballot. 

But  the  great  thing  that  has  happened  is  Sarah. 

That  meeting  with  Laura  must  have  been  rather  a 
remarkable  spectacle.  Aunt  Paul  was  not  here  when  it 
happened,  so  that  I  have  no  report  save  Sarah's.  From 
this  I  am  at  liberty  to  gather  that  any  picture  I  formed 
was  in  a  fair  way  to  approximate  the  fact. 

Because  they  came  together  without  observation  I 
can  fancy  that  the  whole  process  was  quicker  than  it 
would  have  been  under  other  conditions.  There  need 
have  been  no  fencing.  Laura  is  a  straight  hitter,  and 
she  left  me  to  go  straight  after  a  definite  business. 

Despite  the  relief,  the  protestations  of  affection — and 
the  tears — I'm  sure  that  Sarah  began  by  gulping  down 
an  annoyance.  She  was  bound  to  feel,  as  I  did,  that 
she  had  been  needlessly  duped  and  humiliated. 

"You  know,"  she  said  to  me,  "how  exasperating  it  is, 
in  a  play  or  something,  to  have  people  floundering  around 
like  a  lot  of  blind  puppies,  or  gasping  and  wrangling  over 
a  fool  quibble  that  could  be  brushed  aside  if  only  some 
one  would  say  a  simple  word  he  persists  in  not  saying? 
You  get  the  feeling  that  it's  all  just  to  make  a  plot  and 
you  want  to  take  the  writer  by  the  neck  and  shake  the 
nonsense  out  of  him.  When  it  happens  with  real  people 
doesn't  it  seem  a  little  worse — at  first?" 

I  agreed. 

"And  yet  when  you  know  .  .  ." 

"But  I  don't  know." 

Laura,  it  soon  appeared,  had  poured  forth  the  whole 
thing  to  Sarah,  quite  in  a  woman-to-woman  way,  with 


264  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

all  of  the  woman  side  of  that  domestic  tragedy  out  of 
which  rose  the  hard  figure  of  old  Rudley,  like  a  hulk 
of  weather-stained  granite  in  the  green  of  a  New  England 
field.  In  fact,  some  such  revelation  was  indispensable 
to  any  answering  of  the  basic  question.  There  was,  in 
deed,  in  Zorn's  translation  a  vivid  picture  of  all  that  led 
up  to  the  disintegration,  but  the  daughter  had  been  a 
vague  element.  She  had  been  simply  the  daughter  who 
went  away  as  the  son  did.  One  might  make  anything 
he  chose  out  of  that. 

Sarah  was  a  fine  picture  of  sympathetic  scorn  as  she 
recounted  Laura's  final  scene  with  her  father — a  scene 
which  Robert  Rudley  may  have  omitted  from  any  nar 
rative  to  Zorn  by  reason  of  the  obligations  of  the  pe 
culiar  compact  which  followed. 

Old  Rudley,  it  seems,  had  hurled  out  something  about 
"his  name."  He  is  the  kind  of  man  who  would  do 
that  with  special  unction. 

"Your  name!"  cried  Laura.  "I'm  through  with  it. 
You  may  keep  it.  It  isn't  worth  the  frightful  price  you 
ask  a  daughter  to  pay  for  it.  I'll  take  my  mother's 
name.  It  will  fit  me  better  and  please  me  better.  If 
you  ever  show  any  disrespect  for  my  choice" — I  can 
imagine  how  significant  she  made  this! — "I  shall  feel 
compelled  to  explain  why  1  made  it." 

By  this  stroke  the  young  rebel  was  to  erase  Laura 
Rudley,  quite  wipe  her  away  like  an  image  on  a  slate. 

Chance  must  have  favored  her;  otherwise  the  mere 
change  of  label  and  the  change  of  scene  would  scarcely 
have  separated  her  so  completely.  Chance  and  the 
holding  aloof  instinct  that  discards  rebels  when  they  are 
feminine.  Brannington  does  not  track  its  people.  It 
simply  sits  alert,  like  a  cat,  listening.  But  much  es 
capes  even  the  best  listeners.  When  Laura  went  to 
New  York  there  was  an  end  of  knowing  anything  about 
her.  A  man  like  Joe  G  radish  might  come  back  with  a 
report  of  suspecting  that  he  had  seen  her  on  a  Fifth 


THE  BURDEN  265 

Avenue  bus — with  a  man  who  was  far  from  satisfactory 
in  appearance.  A  man  was  indispensable  to  such  a  re 
port.  But  Gradish  had  not  been  positive  about  the  girl. 
He  was  an  indefinite  person;  a  great  trial  to  his  wife, 
who  was  always  sure  of  everything,  particularly  if  it 
was  unpleasant.  .  .  . 

"The  matter  of  the  name,"  I  said  to  Sarah,  "doesn't 
seem  to  me  so  important  in  itself.  What  I  can't  under 
stand—" 

"Of  course,"  interrupted  Sarah.  "How  could  you 
understand  unless  you  had  been  told?  Probably  you 
frightened  Laura  into — " 

I  laughed.  The  idea  of  frightening  Laura  seemed 
quaint  enough. 

"Unless  you  knew  how  Rob  Rudley  hunted  her  up," 
Sarah  went  on,  "and  how  they  fought  out  what  was 
left  to  them,  you  wouldn't  get  it  at  all." 

"Did  they  fight,  too?" 

Sarah's  look  seemed  to  suggest  that  this  was  to  be 
regarded  as  cynical.  Yet  she  was  forced  to  justify  me. 

"  That  was  a  terrible  part  of  it.  Though  it  wasn't  like 
the  other.  Not  at  all.  Parent  and  children — perhaps 
we  ought  to  expect  that  might  happen.  But  brother 
and  sister!"  Sarah  looked  at  me  steadily.  "We  scrap 
sometimes.  But  we  never  have  fought,  have  we?" 

"Except  that  day  in  the  barn,"  I  suggested. 

Sarah  winced.  I,  too,  had  a  twinge.  That  had  been 
a  terrible  thing,  that  quarrel  in  the  barn. 

"We  were  kids  then.  I  don't  mean  that.  You've 
never  been  that  way  since." 

"Thank  you,"  I  said.  I  should  be  glad  to  think  I 
had  never  been  that  way  since.  To  myself  I  said, 
"Nor  you,  either."  Yet  this  may  not  be  true.  Sarah 
might  go  as  far  again  under  sufficient  provocation. 

"The  trouble  was,"  said  Sarah,  "that  Rob  felt  re 
sponsible  for  her." 

"Naturally." 


266  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"And  naturally  she  wanted  him  to  mind  his  own 
business.  He  hadn't  done  that  very  well." 

"Most  of  us  don't." 

"She  wanted  liberty  and  she  was  going  to  have  it. 
She  was  always  sorry  that  she  told  him  he  was  as  bad  as 
his  father.  She  didn't  mean  it.  She  knew  better.  He 
is  not  in  the  least  like  his  father.  But  she  said  it.  He 
caught  her  by  the  shoulders.  'You  mean,  then/  he 
said,  pretty  savagely,  I  suppose,  'that  you  just  want  to 
go  to  the  devil.'  'I  mean,'  she  told  him,  'that  I'm  tired 
of  belonging;  dead  tired.  I'm  tired  of  being  anybody's 
-daughter.  And  it  seems  1  must  refuse  to  be  anybody's 
sister.  I  can  do  that,  too.  I  want  to  be  myself.  I'm 
going  to  be  myself.  The  world  is  moving  that  way. 
Women  have  become  persons.  Can  you  understand 
that?  You  go  your  way,  don't  you?  I'm  going  mine. 
You  can  call  it  anything  you  like.  If  it  gives  you  any 
comfort  to  call  it  going  to  the  devil,  take  it.  I've  had 
a  little  of  heU.  I  know  the  worst."5 

There  were  words  bitterer  than  these,  for  Rudley  held 
on.  In  the  end  she  shook  herself  free,  and  Rudley, 
rather  dumbly  angry  and  miserable,  retained  but  a  few 
shreds  of  all  he  had  clutched.  The  strange  bargain  was 
of  her  making.  She  was  to  be  utterly  cut  off.  She 
wanted  that.  She  wanted  the  feel  of  being  cut  off,  of 
arranging  her  own  world  and  seeing  what  might  come 
of  it. 

"For  how  long?"  he  asked  her,  beaten,  his  back  to  the 
wall. 

It  was  so  much  as  if  the  matter  were  to  be  reduced 
to  writing  that  she  laughed,  and  this  was  part  of  the 
mischief.  It  led  him,  in  a  fury  of  resolution,  to  nail 
the  terms  when  they  came. 

"Oh,  let  us  say  five  years." 

In  his  beaten  fury  he  thought  of  nothing  at  last  but 
of  making  the  foolish  compact  literal.  IJe  was  not  to 
know  her.  She  was  Laura  Sherrick,  an  unencumbered 


THE  BURDEN  267 

person,  a  Lady  of  Fortune  (this  was  a  phrase  that  had 
cut  him  sorely),  with  a  fixed  purpose  of  getting  ac 
quainted  with  the  world  without  an  introduction. 

So  much  for  the  father's  work. 

I  have  no  doubt  that  neither  of  them  stopped  to  think 
how  childish  this  bargaining  was.  Laura's  ranting 
against  man-intrusion  was  a  blind  plunge  upon  a  high 
way  to  nowhere,  as  when  a  prisoner  escapes,  urged  not 
by  a  destination,  but  by  the  bars  that  are  left  behind. 
Rudley's  part  was  a  matter  of  man-pride.  A  father's 
brutality  called  for  chivalry  from  the  son  and  brother. 
And  when  chivalry  spoke  it  was  snubbed.  It  was  al 
most  as  if  she  classed  him  with  his  father.  This  he  made 
her  understand.  The  thing  she  never  had  hoped  to 
make  him  understand  was  that,  in  her  mood  of  those 
days,  the  motive  for  man-intrusion  made  no  difference. 
She  wanted  liberty  from  man-government,  affectionate 
or  otherwise.  She  had  theories.  She  had  no  objection 
to  being  a  woman,  but  she  had  acquired,  God  knows  how, 
a  prodigious  prejudice  against  being  a  female. 

Perhaps  it  is  on  account  of  this  prejudice  that  we  can 
have  a  City  of  the  Successfully  Single.  Woman  has 
been  trying  to  arrange  things  quite  in  the  spirit  of  a 
notation  describing  a  certain  variety  named  in  my 
butterfly-book:  "Sexes  not  essentially  different"  .  .  . 

Rudley's  absences  in  the  West  doubtless  made  the 
long  separation  less  artificial  than  it  might  have  been 
under  other  circumstances.  He  had  his  own  way  of 
knowing  where  she  was.  And  there  had  been  rather  cool 
letters.  When  he  settled  at  his  engineering  work  in  New 
York  he  contrived  to  meet  her  alone,  making  it  very 
clear  that  he  was  no  person  to  break  a  bargain.  The 
meeting  at  my  aunt's  apartment  on  the  night  when  my 
suspicions  of  their  acquaintance  had  been  aroused  was, 
by  Laura's  admission  to  Sarah,  a  real  thriller.  .  .  . 

Then  came  the  night  when  she  went  to  see  him. 
Evidently  she  herself  didn't  know  why  she  did  it.  I 


268  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

fancy  the  flame  of  her  defiance  was  burning  rather  low. 
It  appears  that  to  give  herself  a  last  debate  she  avoided 
the  elevator  and  walked  up-stairs.  In  the  first  flight  she 
thought  she  would  see  Sarah.  In  the  second  she  fixed 
on  going  to  him.  In  the  third  flight  she  was  back  again 
to  Sarah.  And  so  on.  It  was  just  as  she  had  decided 
to  see  Sarah  that  she  turned  and  touched  her  brother's 
bell. 

Of  this  talk  Sarah  received  very  little;  at  all  events, 
very  little  of  it  was  given  to  me.  My  impression  is 
that  Laura  was  getting  ready  to  arrange  terms  of  sur 
render,  and  that  Rudley  had  the  hard  luck  to  blunder 
...  or  at  least  to  say  something  (implying  Sarah,  I  fancy) 
that  didn't  give  the  happiest  effect.  There  was  no 
smash,  but  rapprochement  was  delayed.  It  is  probable 
that  he  went  to  find  her  before  he  sailed.  Certainly  he 
would  have  written.  But  her  disappearance  had  made 
either  contact  impossible.  When  she  learned  that  he 
actually  had  gone  a  full  sense  of  some  things  caught  her 
by  the  throat.  .  .  . 

To-night  I  looked  into  Sarah's  room  (I  am  hobbling 
artistically)  and  found  her  bent  over  a  letter.  When  she 
turned  her  face  I  saw  some  things  in  it  that  were  not 
painted  by  the  amber  shade  of  the  electric  globes. 

"To  him?"  I  asked. 

She  nodded. 

"Me,  too." 

And  to-morrow  is  drawing-time  in  the  great  lottery. 
To-morrow  is  soldier  day. 

II 
I  am  1455. 

The  finger  of  Fate  was  leveled  impressively,  and  a 
great  voice  has  shouted  the  number  across  the  hills. 

A  dramatic  thing;  a  hundred  million-odd  looking  on 
with  awe,  or  a  grin,  or  a  shifting  inattention. 


THE  BURDEN  269 

I  am  1455,  and  well  to  the  front  of  my  district  num 
bers.  Clearly  I  am  drawn  in  the  first  of  the  draft. 

The  number  begins  to  have  a  fascination.  It  has  a 
sound  of  history.  In  1455  Mohammed  II  was  in  Con 
stantinople  and  Alfonso  Borgia  was  becoming  Pope; 
Gutenberg  was  printing  the  first  Latin  Bible,  Fra  An- 
gelico  was  dying  in  Italy,  and  Britain  was  beginning  an 
ugly  war  with  a  beautiful  name — The  War  of  the  Roses. 
It  was  an  ugly  war,  but  not  so  ugly  as  this  one.  Surely 
not.  History  has  no  war  so  ugly  as  this  one.  Any 
man  who  has  seen  another  die  of  the  gas  will  believe 
that,  I  am  certain. 

Yet  even  so  ugly  a  war  cannot  kill  beauty.  Perhaps 
only  the  ugliest  war  could  build  a  background  for  su 
preme  beauty.  I  am  not  thinking  of  the  beauty  of 
this  Spring  which  glows  in  the  crevices  of  the  city. 
The  caverns  are  spattered  with  green  gems.  There 
is  a  heightened  color  in  life.  .  .  .  And  the  robes  of 
Spring  are  trailing  meanwhile  into  the  very  flames  of 
war.  .  .  . 

I  am  thinking  of  the  glad  spirit  of  service;  of  the 
proud  volunteer,  and  the  conscript  with  his  "Ready!" 
stirring  in  the  mass;  of  the  awakening  conscience  of  a 
people;  of  the  new  luster  in  the  flag  and  the  kindling 
crimson  in  the  cross;  of  the  new  light  in  the  eyes  of 
those  who  hear  the  tales  from  that  front  overseas,  told 
in  the  passion  of  courage;  of  the  wonderful  mounting 
beauty  of  Idealism,  shining  faintly  but  largely  and  grow 
ing  hour  by  hour  more  superbly  majestic  in  the  nation's 
sight. 

I  am  thinking  of  the  beauty  that  will  ultimately 
drive  out  the  crawling  shadows  in  trenches  and  in 
brains,  that  will  wring  sympathy  from  selfishness,  and 
arouse  in  the  soul  of  the  race  a  New  Desire  more 
penetrating  in  its  vision,  more  persistent  in  its  con 
victions,  more  compelling  in  its  splendor  than  any  the 
world  has  known. 


270  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

in 

I  go  proudly  to  my  humiliation,  because  I  believe  in 
the  thing  to  be  done.  It  is  a  chapter  to  be  lived. 

"You  won't  do."  There  will  be  a  way  of  telling  me 
that,  and  I  shall  pass  on  to  the  work  for  which  I  will  do. 

But  I  may  not  take  this  for  granted.  To  the  United 
States  I  am  a  name  and  a  number.  The  name  and  the 
number  must  be  made  visible,  palpable.  We  have  come 
to  the  times  of  physical  contact.  Physical  contact  is 
the  basis  of  the  trouble.  Things  of  the  spirit  are  not 
postponed,  but  they  are  not  all  in  all.  The  spirit  ten 
ants  a  body,  and  the  body  has  its  affairs.  Just  now  its 
affair  is  conflict. 

Alonzo  is  drawn.  Owen  Drynd  trails  in  those  last 
numbers  that  belong  to  the  deferred.  I  learned  about 
the  cobbler's  son  when  I  carried  a  shoe  to  be  mended 
in  accommodation  to  my  bothered  foot.  Old  Drynd 
seemed  vastly  relieved,  though  skeptical  of  the  future. 

"The  young  fool  isn't  satisfied!"  cried  the  father, 
hoarsely.  "You'd  think  he  was  cheated  by  not  coming 
at  the  top  of  the  list.  Of  course  they  wouldn't  have 
taken  him,  anyhow — with  a  wife  and  baby.  Would 
they,  do  you  think?" 

I  didn't  know.  "  To-morrow  and  after  we  shall  under 
stand  those  things  better." 

"Ah  yes!    To-morrow.     Did  you  .  .  .?" 

He  looked  at  me  uncomfortably. 

"Yes,"  I  said.     "They  begin  sizing  us  up  to-morrow." 

His  eyes  followed  me  to  the  door  with  a  curious  pon 
dering  intensity.  It  was  as  if  he  had  fetched  some 
fresh  mood  when  he  released  his  black  pipe  from  the 
quartet  of  sound  teeth  in  the  left  of  his  jaw. 

"And  yet,  by  God!  we'll  smash  the  Beast!"  he  shouted 
after  me. 

"I'm  sure  of  it!"  I  shouted  back. 

By  way  of  sarcasm  there  is  the  scene  in  the  Marriage 


THE  BURDEN  271 

License  Bureau  where  couples  are  scrambling  into  wed 
lock  to  cheat  the  call.  In  all  the  history  of  the  war  this 
will  count  as  the  most  pitiful  thing.  The  great  picture 
has  to  have  its  shadows. 


IV 

"Hurry  up,  there!    You'll  be  late  for  school!" 

A  grinning  old  man,  stooped  over  a  cane,  with  several 
soiled  newspapers  under  one  arm,  piped  this  salutation 
as  I  reached  the  step  of  the  stern  brick  building  to  which 
1455  and  the  appointed  crowd  of  his  compatriots  had 
been  summoned. 

The  joke  was  enjoyed  by  a  group  of  children,  now  re 
motely  of  the  school  and  loosed  for  the  summer. 

I  think  the  old  fellow  must  have  stood  there  long 
enough  to  get  the  full  effect  of  the  foregathering.  The 
school-house  had  a  gaunt  way  of  seeming  to  share  the 
awkward  feeling  of  the  intruding  citizens  under  thirty- 
one,  who  shuffled  about  with  noises  that  were,  like  their 
bodies,  too  large  for  the  place.  The  man-sounds  echoed 
discordantly.  There  were  gruff  titters  about  the  low 
desks  and  benches.  Such  a  place  has,  in  fact,  a  kind 
of  comic  austerity  under  out-of-season  circumstances, 
when  there  is  no  frowning  principal  on  the  platform, 
no  hovering  teachers  to  express  the  limits  of  liberty, 
and  men  of  the  world  are  shuffling  irreverently  in  the 
hard  ruts  of  Education. 

Within  the  street  doors  the  steps  on  each  side  turned 
toward  a  common  landing  leading  to  the  assembly-hall. 
Beyond,  on  three  sides,  were  the  class-rooms,  like  empty 
cages,  many  inexplicable  doors,  and  one  door  that  soon 
acquired  an  immense  significance.  This  was  the  door 
through  which  the  men  went  to  their  examination. 
Behind  it  were  the  doctors.  It  was  in  the  far  corner, 
leading  to  a  wing. 

The  Draft  Board  official  sat  at  the  principal's  desk;  an 


272  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

amiable  man  wearing  a  gray  alpaca  jacket,  a  cool-look 
ing  silk  shirt,  and  belted  baggy  trousers.  When  I  en 
countered  him  he  was  trying  to  relight  a  cigar  that  had 
burned  very  short,  so  that  he  had  to  use  extraordinary 
precautions  not  to  singe  his  nose.  A  hulking  chap,  well 
past  six  feet,  offered  a  fresh  smoke,  but  this  was  de 
clined  with  a  little-finger  gesture  (during  the  lighting 
process)  that  said  very  clearly,  "No  gifts!" 

The  willing,  the  indifferent,  and  the  unwilling  were  all 
about  me,  and  not  by  any  means  to  be  identified  at 
once.  Bits  of  talk  between  acquaintances  often  gave 
some  indication  of  the  attitude  of  this  or  that  individ 
ual  toward  the  ponderous  grind  of  the  system. 

"Say,  Eddie,"  remarked  a  stocky  boy  to  his  com 
panion,  "  better  keep  away  from  the  winder  if  you  want 
to  get  by  with  that  bum  ear." 

"I've  been  smoking  too  damn  much,"  declared  an 
other;  "and  I'm  afraid  my  heart  is  very  bad." 

"The  hell  you're  afraid!"  chimed  in  one  of  his  group. 

This  brought  the  inevitable  laugh. 

"Mike,"  said  a  lank  boy  who  was  excitedly  chewing 
gum,  "you  know  you  can  git  off  for  red  hair." 

"Well,  I  can  tell  yer  this,"  said  Mike.  "Bern'  a 
bonehead  won't  save  you." 

"Oh,  I'm  strong  for  goin',"  protested  the  lank  boy. 
"All  I'm  afraid  of  's  my  feet." 

"They  are  too  big,"  said  Mike.  "You're  right  about 
that.  And  they'll  be  bigger  before  you  get  through." 

"What  is  'flat  feet'?"  asked  a  sallow  man  with  wiry 
black  hair  and  shifting  dark  eyes,  who  had  a  handker 
chief  tucked  under  the  rim  of  his  collar. 

"Let's  see,"  answered  Mike.     "Put  up  your  foot." 

The  questioner  did  as  he  was  told. 

Mike  examined  the  member  critically.  "Wonder 
ful!  Ye  have  the  foot  of  a  gineral.  You're  born  for 
a  soldier!" 

"An'  him  with  three  kids!" 


THE  BURDEN  273 

"An'  you  with  three  wives!" 

"An*  me  only  three  days  married!" 

There  were  others  in  the  chorus  and  fresh  gusts  of 
muffled  laughter. 

Beside  me  on  a  waiting  bench  was  a  youngster  of  a 
clean  cut,  manly  type,  with  an  earnest  mouth,  and  wistful 
eyes  that  roved  now  and  again  to  the  doctor's  door. 
He  was  intent  and  motionless  save  for  fingers  that  folded 
and  refolded  a  scrap  of  paper. 

I  wondered  about  him.  What  were  his  hopes  or 
fears?  No  trouble  in  this  era  to  imagine  any  one  of  a 
thousand  things  about  him. 

Suddenly,  as  if  in  the  crisis  of  a  resolution,  he  turned 
to  me. 

"Would  you  think  that  a  trick  here — with  these  doc 
tors — would  be  dishonorable?" 

"A  trick  to  get  out  of  it?" 

"No,  no!"  He  said  this  without  indignation,  yet  with 
a  quick  emphasis  that  had  a  burning  quality.  "A  trick 
to  get  in." 

"I  would  expect  that  your  motive  was  honorable,"  I 
said.  "That  ought  to  go  a  long  way.  Of  course,  if 
you  concealed  anything  that  would  make  you  a  burden 
afterward — " 

"I  don't  see  how  it  could  make  me  a  burden  after 
ward,"  he  said,  quietly,  as  if  measuring  some  chance. 

The  word  "honorable"  had  sounded  so  fantastic  in 
this  particular  setting  that  I  found  myself  a  trifle  at  a 
loss.  Yet  it  fitted  the  face  and  the  voice.  And,  oddly, 
it  had  not  really  sounded  sentimental.  It  was  the  right 
word;  surely  it  belonged  to  the  concerns  of  the  moment, 
however  widely  this  phase  might  be  overlooked.  I  con 
cluded,  nevertheless,  that  he  might  have  worked  him 
self  into  an  emotional  anxiety  that  was  groundless,  if 
he  was  not  deceiving  himself  into  believing  that  medical 
examinations  were  a  grotesque  kind  of  confessional  con 
ducted  at  dueling  distance. 


274  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"My  impression  is,"  I  said,  by  way  of  safeguarding 
him  against  any  foolish  pretense  or  in  some  measure 
against  disappointment,  "that  when  these  doctor  folks 
lay  hands  on  you  they  will  find  out  the  facts,  whatever 
they  are." 

He  turned  to  me  squarely  and  whispered,  "Do  you 
see  anything  wrong  with  my  eyes?" 

"No,"  I  said,  quite  truthfully.  They  were,  in  fact, 
an  exceedingly  handsome  pair  of  eyes.  I  had  had  a  bit 
of  experience  in  being  deceived  by  eyes. 

He  nodded  gratefully. 

"The  left  one  is  nearly  gone.  .  .  .  Not  the  sighting  eye, 
you  see.  It  doesn't  matter  at  all.  Why,  Roosevelt  has 
lost  the  sight  of  one  eye.  Would  any  one  say  .  .  .?" 

"Later  on — "  I  began. 

"Ah!  That's  all  right!  Later  on.  It  might  be 
blamed  on  anything  later  on.  Anything  at  all."  He 
brought  his  face  near  to  mine.  "My  mother  wouldn't 
stand  for  my  enlisting.  And  now  I've  got  my  chance. 
You  see"  ...  he  lowered  his  head  for  a  moment  and 
folded  the  piece  of  paper  into  a  minute  wad  .  .  .  "you 
see,  the  girl  wants  me  to  go.  I've  got  to  go !  It  will  be 
a  great  thing  for  me,  in  every  way.  .  .  .  Every  way." 

"Does  the  girl  know — ?" 

"About  the  eye?  No."  He  seemed  to  shrink  at 
admitting  this.  His  lips  drew  together  sharply.  "It 
came  on  since  I've  known  her.  But  she's  the  kind  of 
girl  who  wouldn't  care  about  that  if  it  happened — if  it 
happened,  you  know." 

"I  see."  It  was  to  be  a  badge  of  honor  if  it  happened. 
Poor  lad! 

"They  wouldn't  side-track  a  man  for  that — if  the 
game  was  on.  Plenty  of  men — " 

"Number  eighteen  ninety-four!" 

He  sprang  to  his  feet.     "My  number!"  he  cried. 

"Best  of  luck!"  said  I.  If  they  didn't  test  his  eyes 
separately  .  .  . 


THE  BUKDEN  275 

A  chap  on  crutches  passed  through  the  door  in  ad 
vance  of  him.  There  was  an  impressive  contrast  in  the 
two  figures.  The  figure  that  followed  him  was  that  of 
an  alert  person  who  had  been  seated  with  another  at  a 
little  distance.  He  carried  his  right  arm  in  a  sling.  I 
had  heard  the  expression,  uttered  in  a  low  voice,  "It's 
a  cinch!" 

The  returning  figures  had  varied  ways  of  emerging. 
Some  hurried  away.  Others  dropped  back  into  groups 
they  had  left,  exchanging  jokes  or  whispering  accounts 
of  their  experiences.  Mostly  they  were  a  stalwart  lot, 
accentuating  the  discords  of  the  sling  or  the  crutch. 

"  Good  stuff  for  soldiers,"  I  said  to  myself — a  National 
Army  in  the  period  of  gestation. 

One  thing  was  apparent:  not  all  of  them  knew  the 
results  of  the  examination. 

"Guess  I'm  all  right,"  grunted  one  grinning  husky, 
grasping  the  hand  of  a  predecessor  who  had  been  waiting. 
They  linked  arms  cheerfully,  lighted  cigarettes  at  the 
door,  and  went  down  the  steps  together. 

"How  about  it,  Mike?"  challenged  one  of  the  Irish 
lad's  friends. 

"The  old  one  kicked  a  little  on  the  baseball  finger," 
said  Mike,  "  but  I  told  him  it  was  all  set  for  the  trigger. 
And  listen  here,  Skinny.  Go  over  there  and  drink  four 
glasses  of  water.  Ye'll  be  weighed  in.  Don't  forgit  that." 

Skinny  obeyed. 

The  young  man  on  crutches  hobbled  out  and  went 
his  way.  When  my  companion  of  the  bench  came  out 
his  face  was  set.  His  look  spelled  failure.  He  was  for 
passing  me  without  a  sign,  as  if  not  trusting  himself  to 
do  otherwise.  Then  he  caught  my  glance,  shook  his 
head,  and  strode  on  without  looking  back. 

Very  soon  after  came  the  arm  in  a  sling,  a  very  dif 
ferent  face  accompanying  this.  ...  A  face  I  now  recog 
nized  as  one  that  I  had  seen  somewhere  before. 

The  author  of  the  opinion  that  it  was  a  cinch  got  up 


276  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

from  one  of  the  desks  where  he  had  been  reading  a 
newspaper.  The  two  heads  came  together.  Here  was 
satisfaction.  Nothing  could  be  more  disgustingly  plain. 
As  the  two  moved  away  I  peered  again  at  the  face. 
Almost  at  the  same  instant  the  man  of  the  sling  fas 
tened  upon  me  an  extraordinary  look.  The  fusing  of 
those  glances  lighted  up  the  case.  He  was  the  man  of 
the  roof  and  the  revolver. 

There  was  something  malignant  in  the  first  flash  of 
him.  .  .  .  Astonishment,  and  then  a  bitter  fighting  look, 
followed  by  a  sardonic  change  that  ended  in  the  nastiest 
imaginable  smile.  He  knew  and  I  knew  that  I  had 
saved  a  crook  from  the  honors  of  war. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  he  hurried  at  the  steps.  Was 
there  really  a  surviving  injury?  Had  there  been  a 
bungled  setting  or  had  some  faked  effect  been  bran 
dished  for  the  hour's  purposes?  It  didn't  matter.  He 
was  free  of  the  draft  for  the  present.  The  National 
Army  was  saved  of  one  rascal.  .  .  . 

"Number  fourteen  fifty-five!" 

It  was  part  of  the  ordeal  to  feel  the  stare  of  all  that 
remained  there  in  that  hall  ...  to  feel  the  stare  follow 
me  to  that  door  at  the  heels  of  one  of  the  biggest  of 
the  conscripts,  who  shot  a  queer  look  of  recognition  over 
his  shoulder. 

The  thing  that  followed  was  as  brief  as  I  had  fancied 
it  would  be,  yet  wholly  different  from  anything  I  had 
pictured.  My  first  bewildered  impression  was  of  a 
naked  boy,  and  of  another,  half  dressed,  turning  upon 
me  with  a  petrified  incredulity.  ...  Of  a  funny  pause  in 
which  I  could  form  no  notion  of  what  I  should  do,  be 
cause  no  doctor  was  visible. 

At  last  the  bald  head  hove  in  sight  .  .  .  Old  Karp, 
letting  down  his  fretted  look,  and  advancing  upon  me 
with  an  annoying  radiance. 

"Well,  well!     Upon  my  word!" 

Suddenly,  then,  he  commanded  me  to  be  seated  on 


THE  BURDEN  277 

the  only  available  chair.  He  became  very  stern.  His 
glowering  didn't  fit  very  well  with  his  next  movement, 
which  was  that  of  dropping  upon  one  knee  before  me. 

"Let  me  see  your  right  foot." 

"It's  quite  well,"  I  said.     "As  good  as  ever." 

"Young  man,"  he  remarked,  with  a  deepened  stern 
ness,  "in  this  place  doctors  must  be  obeyed."  At  this 
he  reached  down,  unlaced  my  shoe,  and  slipped  off  my 
stocking  with  a  firm,  quick  gentleness. 

"Trickster!"  I  thought  as  his  fingers  moved  over  the 
flesh  he  held  in  his  hands.  My  face  was  burning. 

"Too  bad.  A  fractured  phalange,  remarkably  well 
set,  and  handsomely  healed.  But  the  foot  will  require 
care  for  a  long  time — some  months.  It  must  be  favored. 
Marching  on  it  would  be  simply  impossible.  I'm  very 
sorry.  Let  me  see  your  card." 

I  fumbled  for  the  card.  He  went  to  a  near-by  table, 
scribbled  for  a  moment  over  his  record  slips,  and  handed 
back  to  me  the  card,  indicating  that  I  was  privileged  to 
restore  my  stocking  and  shoe. 

"Thank  you,"  he  said,  still  with  his  stern  manner. 
"The  record  is  properly  made.  Take  care  of  yourself. 
Particularly,"  he  added,  when  my  head  came  up,  "keep 
away  from  Anarchist  meetings!  And" — he  decided 
upon  a  further  amendment — "please  convey  my  pro- 
foundest  respects  to  the — eh — portly  lady." 

"You  mean  my  aunt?" 

"Your  aunt,  yes.  She  is — eh — very  charming."  He 
put  his  hand  on  my  shoulder.  "  You  can't  object  to  my 
saying  that.  No.  And  remember  that  I  shall  want  to 
see  that  book." 

"There  are  more  important  matters  now!"  I  grunted, 
defiantly,  at  the  door. 

"The  world  needs  good  books  more  than  ever,"  he 
called,  cheerily. 

I  don't  know  what  freak  of  the  brain,  working  in  the 
fever  of  that  transit  to  the  street,  loosened  from  the 

19 


278  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

darkness,  in  ironic  blackboard  letters,  that  phrase  out 
of  Ephesians — 

The  desires  of  the  flesh  and  of  the  mind. 

My  sudden  impression  of  these  words  was  as  strangely 
vivid  as  those  of  the  Psalmist's  singing  line: 

The  man  goeth  forth  to  his  work. 


My  aunt  knows  how  to  take  these  things.  She  is 
never  by  any  chance  at  all  mawkish,  either  in  what  she 
says  or  in  what  she  leaves  unsaid.  She  simply  under 
stands.  She  has  an  understanding  laugh — which  is  very 
rare.  A  laugh  can  be  an  immense  cruelty,  perhaps  the 
most  scalding  of  all  audible  things.  Aunt  Paul's  laugh, 
though  she  can  do  anything  she  cares  to  do  with  it,  is 
capable  of  wings.  I  can  fancy  her  as  a  kind  of  Winged 
Sympathy.  ...  A  trifle  bulky  for  sculpture,  but  certain 
to  be  impressive. 

While  she  laughed  at  my  narrative  I  knew  that  she 
missed  no  shade  of  significance  in  that  scene  at  the 
school-house.  She  asked  many  questions.  For  in 
stance,  she  wanted  to  know  about  nationalities.  Were 
there  obviously  German  men  in  the  group?  Had  I 
thought  of  the  trying  position  of  American-born  sons  of 
German  parents?  And  Mike,  was  he  a  typical  Irish 
lad,  or  a  much- Americanized  sort? 

Oddly,  she  did  not  laugh  at  Karp's  message  of  respect. 

"The  old  dear!"    That  was  all. 

Sarah  had  a  speech  that  sounded  very  venerable  and 
prophetic:  "No  jugglery  matters.  We  shall  all  be  in  it 
one  way  or  another.  I've  been  reading  about  England 
and  France.  ..." 

Yesterday  I  went  to  find  Zorn  in  the  street  off  Stuy- 
vesant  Square.  I  discovered  him  at  the  corner,  standing 


THE  BURDEN  279 

with  a  group  of  boys  in  khaki.  When  I  discerned  his 
black  figure  I  slowed  my  stride,  hesitating  as  to  the  ex 
pediency  of  a  strategic  detour.  He  was  speaking  ve 
hemently.  It  was  possible  to  hear,  in  an  exaggerated 
kind  of  stage  whisper,  the  words: 

"Yes,  you  are  willing  to  give  up  your  lives  for  your 
country.  Of  course.  I  know  that.  But  are  you  will 
ing  to  keep  away  from  women  for  your  country?  That  is 
what  is  going  to  count  big  on  the  other  side.  Tre 
mendously.  Do  you  know  .  .  ." 

I  veered  to  pass  the  group,  from  which  there  was  no 
sound  that  gave  the  flavor  of  the  response  to  this  ex 
hortation,  if  there  was  an  audible  response. 

Zorn  caught  sight  of  me  and  hailed  me  with  a  gesture 
while  holding  to  the  end  of  something  he  was  saying. 

"Some  boys  I  know,"  he  said  to  me  later,  "as  well 
as  an  old  man  can  know  boys.  Good  fellows.  Very 
wise  about  everything  but  the  future.  All  chances  look 
alike  to  them.  That's  youth.  Wars  are  made  possible 
by  old  rascals  who  look  forward  and  young  rascals  who 
don't.  It's  a  blind  game,  take  it  altogether.  As  blind 
as  a  draft  lottery." 

"But  that  has  to  be  blind  to  be  fair,"  I  said.  "And 
Justice,  being  blind,  couldn't  see  the  joke  of  calling  me." 
I  felt  the  need  to  talk  with  him  about  it. 

He  turned  upon  me  earnestly. 

"Were  you  drawn?" 

"Drawn  and  dismissed,"  said  I. 

"Of  course."  He  said  this  absently;  then  caught 
himself  up.  "I  mean  that  it  had  to  be  so.  I'm  sure 
you  were  ready.  If  you  continue  to  be  ready  to  help, 
the  need  will  find  you." 

He  went  through  with  this  platitude  without  zest, 
adding,  explosively:  "It  would  be  the  same  with  me. 
Can't  you  see  that  it  goes  by  a  logical  mechanism?" 

"I'm  not  complaining." 

"No.     I  don't  say  that.     Maybe  I'm  reasoning  with 


280  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

myself.  When  a  weapon  of  righteousness  is  to  be  swung 
we  all  want  to  clutch  the  handle." 

By  this  time  we  were  at  his  door.  He  lives  now  in  a 
shabby  house;  on  the  third  floor,  with  his  belongings 
huddled  in  that  curious,  orderly  confusion  which  I  had 
remarked  in  our  next-door  days. 

"Much  cheaper,"  he  said.  "We  must  think  of  these 
things.  The  war  will  cost  a  pile  of  money.  A  thousand 
causes,  all  hitched  to  the  one  cause,  will  want  money. 
We  shall  be  buffeted  a  good  deal  by  the  storm,  what 
ever  we  may  do.  To  begin  with,  you  and  I  belong  in  the 
ravaged  No  Man's  Land  between  the  rich  and  the  poor. 
We  shall  find  it  hot  under  our  feet  before  long.  Do  you 
know,"  he  went  on,  "nothing  new  is  happening.  We 
are  simply  getting  the  mass  effect  of  individual  traits. 
The  war  is  an  eruption  of  something  nasty  in  the  blood 
of  the  races.  When  the  sore  is  cauterized  by  suffering 
humanity  will  be  better." 

He  was  sitting  tentatively  and  uncomfortably  on  the 
corner  of  a  chair  covered  with  papers,  turning  one  of  his 
somber  cigars  as  if  in  debate  as  to  the  proper  end. 

"We  say  that  war  causes  horrors.  But  horrors  cause 
war.  That's  the  thing  we've  got  to  learn — horrors  of 
ignorance,  and  lying,  and  theft,  and  vanity,  and  cow 
ardice.  The  Nietzsches  didn't  produce  the  Prussian 
spirit.  The  Prussian  spirit  produced  the  Nietzsches. 
The  world  should  have  guessed  that  sooner.  If  the 
Prussian  atrocities  suggest  the  bestialities  of  Grimm's 
folk-lore  tales,  and  you  say,  'The  amputated  hands  and 
the  blood  whimsicalities  are  all  in  Grimm/  remember 
that  the  Grimm  fantasies  are  folk  tales  and  part  of  the 
fiber  of  the  Prussian  imagination.  Each  people  carries 
its  sins  hidden  until  the  appointed  hour.  Poor  Russia 
found  that  a  whole  people  couldn't  be  kept  in  darkness. 
The  religious  mess  in  the  Balkans  couldn't  go  on  festering 
forever.  England  couldn't  go  on  swanking  through  the 
world  without  stubbing  its  arrogant  toes  against  the 


THE  BURDEN  281 

bones  of  the  past.  The  United  States,  with  its  paper 
patriotism  and  loose- jointed  complacence,  couldn't  in 
definitely  escape  the  need  to  fold  the  thumb  of  purpose 
over  the  fingers  of  capacity  and  bring  down  a  real  fist." 

He  illustrated  this  image  with  his  own  wiry  hand, 
then  arose  to  answer  a  knock  at  his  door. 

I  heard  a  woman's  voice  and  Zorn's  low  responses. 
The  talk  on  the  landing  continued  for  some  minutes. 

When  Zorn  came  back  he  seemed  to  have  picked  up 
a  new  text. 

"Oh,  we'll  find  our  fist!"  he  cried,  with  a  despairing 
note,  "and  we'll  forget  some  things  altogether.  The 
forgetting  will  go  with  it.  Take  a  case  like  this. 
Here's  the  jani tress  of  the  house.  She  lives  in  the  base 
ment.  A  Bavarian  woman.  A  clean,  kindly  soul. 
Think  of  her.  Bred  to  revere  the  motherland.  Brothers 
in  the  German  army — in  particular  the  great,  handsome 
brother  who  is  an  qffizier.  And  now  her  son  has  been 
drawn  and  accepted  in  America.  Nothing  novel.  Just 
an  average  case.  I  suspect  that  he  goes  cheerfully. 
Plenty  of  his  friends  are  going.  It  is  the  great  advent 
ure.  But  the  woman.  There  are  hundreds  of  thou 
sands  of  her  here.  And  she  must  listen  day  after  day — 
well,  to  the  kind  of  thing  I  have  just  been  saying  about 
the  amputated  hands  and  the  ingrained  bestialities. 
What  do  you  suppose  this  will  do  to  her  dreams?  You 
can't  stamp  out  the  love  of  mother-country.  You 
can't  tear  out  the  roots  of  a  blood  bond.  And 
what  do  you  suppose  she  asked  me  at  the  last? — crying 
through  it — whether  I  thought  it  would  look  proper 
to  have  a  service  flag  on  a  basement  window!  How  are 
you  going  to  measure  the  courage  and  devotion  of  a 
woman  like  that?" 

"We  shouldn't  forget  her.  But  the  courage  and  de 
votion  of  the  altogether  American — " 

"Yes,  I  know!"  he  cut  in,  impatiently,  "yet  we  are 
as  we  are.  Only  the  past  is.  We've  got  to  begin  with 


282  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

that.  We've  got  to  begin  with  what  is  behind  Mrs. 
Stieger's  service  flag.  And  go  on." 

The  truth  is  that  Zorn  is  obsessed  by  all  sorts  of  com 
plexities  growing  out  of  the  pull  and  scramble  of  the 
war.  These  seem  to  have  come  to  him  in  a  great  variety 
of  ways,  but  mostly,  I  suppose,  by  his  habit  of  hearing 
cries  wherever  they  sound.  He  made  it  clear  that  he  is 
apprehensive,  that  he  sees  dark  places  ahead;  that  the 
remoteness  of  the  battle-line  cannot  prevent  terrific  up 
heavals  in  life  here. 

I  expostulated.  I  argued  that  there  would  be  tre 
mendous  readjustments,  but  that  one  might  easily  exag 
gerate  the  vital  side  of  the  calamity.  There  will  be  com 
pensations;  not  compensations  that  can  justify  war,  but 
that  may  go  a  long  way  toward  mitigating  its  dread- 
fulness.  I  tried  to  point  out  some  of  these  compensa 
tions,  with  the  result  that  his  irritation  increased. 

"Do  you  read?"  he  demanded  with  an  excoriating 
sharpness.  "Do  you  know  what  is  happening  behind 
the  lines  on  the  other  side?  Do  you  think  that  by  some 
happy  quibble  we  are  going  to  escape  everything  that  has 
happened  to  them?  Do  you  realize  that  only  fragments 
of  the  misery  get  into  print?  Do  you  think  our  people 
are  going  to  be  able  to  stop  at  the  point  where  the  thing 
gets  to  be  ugly,  like  a  bunch  of  Cook's  tourists  on  a  slum 
ming  jaunt?  Do  you  think  the  whole  story  is  acted  at 
the  front?  'Our  heroes.'  Yes,  yes!  But  a  dead  son 
is  a  dead  son." 

And  so  on.     He  was  in  a  devastated  mood. 

What  a  contrast  in  Nelson  Variot,  whom  I  met  a  little 
later  prancing  away  from  one  of  the  clubs  across  Our 
Square!  Spick  and  span  in  his  khaki,  wearing  a  won 
derfully  new  officer's  cap,  all  agrin,  with  that  absolutely 
academic  stride  and  movement  of  the  shoulders  that  pro 
claim  him  as  quite  of  the  moment.  There  had  been 
Plattsburg  and  all  sorts  of  luck,  including  the  present 
leave,  a  country-house  affair  on  Long  Island,  and  a  cork- 


THE  BURDEN  283 

ing  dance  at  the  Ritz.  Variot's  foreground  glittered.  It 
was  easy  to  see  that. 

Or  consider  Moorell,  who  used  to  edit  the  Fish  Hook 
in  my  day,  and  who  took  a  notion  to  ask  all  of  us  who 
had  been  college  compatriots  of  that  notoriously  brilliant 
staff  to  come  and  see  him  married  in  his  new  naval 
panoply  to  the  rich  Miss  Tray  son  of  Spokane.  Miss 
Trayson,  who  crossed  a  continent  to  meet  Moorell  at 
the  altar  of  Grace  Church,  is  one  of  those  brides  who 
seem,  even  in  the  crisis  of  the  ritual,  to  have  difficulty 
in  concealing  a  conviction  that  the  whole  thing  is  ex 
quisitely  funny.  For  that  matter,  there  is  something 
amusing  in  the  idea  of  Moorell  marrying  any  one.  Though 
his  being  an  officer  may  be  even  more  quaint.  .  .  .  Moo 
rell,  with  his  delightful  irresponsibility,  his  provisional 
attitude  toward  all  obligations!  And  it  may  be  that 
the  brevity  of  MoorelPs  prospective  honeymoon — at  the 
last  his  time  of  leave  had  been  cut  to  forty-eight  hours — 
struck  the  merry  Miss  Trayson  as  a  particularly  good 
joke.  Anyway,  there  they  were  in  the  sunlight  of 
Broadway — laughing  like  two  happy  children.  I  never 
saw  a  more  luminously  blissful  pair.  That  word  "  death  " 
in  the  altar  pledge  had  slunk  by  without  showing  its 
head. 

To  laugh — like  my  aunt!  It  is  a  great  gift!  We  need 
soldiers  who  can  laugh.  Moping  is  a  kind  of  treason. 


VI 

Pine  can  laugh,  and,  though  he  scarcely  could  be  used 
to  fortify  any  general  proposition  as  to  the  virtue  of 
laughter — not  if  I  had  opportunity  to  introduce  certain 
strongly  qualifying  arguments — he  does  it  rather  well. 
He  has  the  optical  advantage  of  very  good  teeth  and  the 
oral  advantage  of  a  pleasant  enough  note.  Of  course 
his  laugh  lacks  conscience.  It  isn't  cruel,  but  it  is  fun 
damentally  lawless. 


284  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

There  must  remain  for  me  always  a  deeply  bitten 
image  of  that  group  of  them — of  Laura  and  Sarah  and 
Pine  as  I  saw  them  thrown  together  in  the  evening  light. 
I  resented  Pine  specifically  because  I  wanted  to  get  the 
effect  of  Laura  and  Sarah  together.  These  two  had  seen 
each  other  on  several  occasions  recently,  but  always 
when  I  was  absent.  Their  being  together  still  had  the 
reunion  flavor,  an  eagerness  of  recovered  possession  that 
brought  to  both  the  glow  of  an  emotional  interval. 
Though  they  were  amazingly  unconsecutive,  as  girls 
are  likely  to  be  under  such  circumstances,  it  was  inter 
esting  to  hear  them  as  well  as  to  see  them.  Without 
being  discordant,  Pine  was  an  intrusion. 

Yet  Pine  filled  a  place  in  the  picture.  Somehow  he 
seemed  mentally  to  be  setting  them  in  relief — to  be  em 
phasizing  their  difference — as  effectively  as  he  marked 
them  off  physically  with  his  snowy  suit.  At  present 
laundry  rates  that  white  duck  was  a  huge  extravagance 
for  Pine.  When  I  saw  his  flowing  white  silk  tie  I  won 
dered  if  he  had  thought  about  his  White  Girl.  Sarah 
wore  a  dotted  Dolly  Vardenish  frock  that  made  one 
think  of  something  in  the  shepherdess  way.  It  aver 
ages  a  sort  of  pink.  Laura  did  not  have  the  Russian- 
blouse  style  of  thing.  She  may  have  shed  that  Green 
wich  Village  symbolism.  I  liked  much  better  the  pale 
olive  dress,  which  incidentally  made  her  seem  slenderer 
and  emphasized  the  beauty  of  her  neck. 

Possibly  Laura  is  prettier  than  Sarah.  I  can't  tell. 
I  wondered  what  Pine  thought.  It  was  exasperating  to 
consider  his  privilege.  When  he  looked  at  Sarah  he 
had  the  glint  of  a  thrilled  appreciation.  Not  that  he 
has  a  devouring  glance.  Whether  by  art  or  instinct,  he 
looks  as  he  speaks,  with  an  assured  naturalness  that 
gives  him,  I  fancy,  an  actual  charm.  He  has  a  species 
of  gentle  boldness  that  belongs,  it  may  be,  to  a  certain 
breed  of  man  after  a  certain  habit  of  life.  His  manner 
with  Laura  reflected  this  trait  to  the  point  of  habituated 


THE  BURDEN  285 

confidence.  I  thought  he  took  her  for  granted,  which 
occurred  to  me  as  damnable. 

To  Sarah  he  is  a  new  kind  of  man.  Perhaps  only  the 
elementally  old  in  a  man  can  seem  new  to  a  woman. 
As  I  reviewed  them  it  seemed  to  me  that  there  had  al 
ways  been  Pines,  while  Lauras  and  Sarahs  are  new.  If 
this  is  an  illusion  it  may  be  that  eyes  are  hopelessly 
sexed.  The  integrity  of  the  equation  may  be  restored 
when  people  marry.  The  assumption  is  that  the  pollen 
of  newness  rubs  off  and  that  the  two  find  themselves 
back  again  at  the  starting-point.  Or  let  us  say,  we 
marry  the  newness  and  find  oldness  in  the  package. 
(Hazen  used  to  put  it  that  marriage  is  often  a  green- 
goods  game  with  one  real  bank-note  on  top.) 

Pine  inspires  cynical  speculations.  On  his  part  I  am 
sure  he  has  thought  of  Sarah  as  a  new  kind.  But  he  will 
marry  Laura  when  she  is  through  being  a  rebel.  That 
is  utterly  clear,  and  she  will  be  punished  for  a  prodigious 
overvaluation. 

I  married  them  with  my  eyes  as  they  stood  there  to 
gether  at  the  piano  and  suffered  a  sense  of  pitiful  calamity. 
"Mrs.  Lawrence  Pine."  Good  God!  Yet  she  will  de 
serve  it.  She  has  had  plenty  of  time  to  look  him  over. 
She  knows  all  about  him  that  a  shrewd  woman  can  know. 
She  has  heard  his  "Desire  of  Love."  If  she  likes  that 
type  he  may  please  her  immensely.  He  is  honest 
enough,  I  have  no  doubt — if  honesty  and  dreams  are 
sufficient  to  go  on  she  will  be  satisfied. 

But  why  does  she  wish  to  dangle  him  before  Sarah? 

At  one  point  I  expected  retribution  for  that.  When 
Sarah  failed  me  I  was  forced  to  feel  the  natural  irony 
of  the  whole  situation. 

Pine  was  standing — he  had  just  left  the  piano  and 
had  halted  to  quote  a  passage  of  that  mournful  Tagore 
— at  the  moment  when  something  was  said  about  the 
songs  of  battle. 

"Mostly  rot,"  he  said,  contemptuously,  "though  some 


286  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

fine  things  will  be  done.  It's  a  pity  they  had  to  kill 
that  boy  Seeger.  He  had  the  spirit  of  a  real  poet." 

"And  a  real  man,"  I  suggested. 

"Poor  lad!"  murmured  Pine.  "Blinded  by  a  blood 
hysteria.  Threw  himself  away.  It  was  a  crime." 

"But  not  his  crime!"  I  retorted. 

"No.  Our  crime!"  Pine  flamed  up.  "Think  of  a 
civilization  that  will  pitch  souls  like  that  into  the  muck 
of  war." 

"Some  of  them  volunteer,"  I  remarked,  "as  Seeger 
did." 

"A  horrible  social  ideal  is  responsible  for  that,"  said 
Pine,  his  face  contorted  as  if  he  shrank  from  the  spec 
tacle.  "It  is  ghastly.  I  can't  think  of  it.  It  makes 
me  ill.  And  this  could  be  such  a  beautiful  world!" 

"But  who  is  to  defend  the  beautiful  world?"  I  asked, 
savagely.  "Who  is  to  decide  who  shall  not  be  pitched? 
Who  is  to  hold  back  the  precious  right  ones  who  must 
not  be  sacrificed?" 

Pine  laughed — acrimoniously  this  time.  "The  won 
derful  Draft  Boards!  Their  wisdom  is  unerring." 

"Of  course  as  a  poet ..."  I  left  this  in  the  air.  God 
knows  he  could  have  made  a  bitter  answer. 

He  insisted  upon  laughing  again.  "It  was  the  good 
Fates  that  decided  that,"  he  rejoined.  "The  Fates 
sitting  beside  that  wheel  in  Washington." 

"And  we  may  sit  back  and  enjoy  the  beautiful  world 
others  have  saved  for  us." 

Pine  flung  out  his  hands.  "Let  the  natural  fighters 
do  the  fighting.  It  is  ordained  that  way.  When  enough 
of  them  hate  it  there  won't  be  any  wars." 

He  was  unspeakable. 

Meanwhile  Laura  was  watching  him  with  a  silent 
intentness — utterly  silent,  with  the  faintest  trace  of  a 
shadow  between  her  brows.  Like  an  accomplice.  Even 
a  cave-woman  would  have  shown  more  spirit.  The  In 
dividualists  stand  together. 


THE  BURDEN  287 

As  for  Sarah,  I  will  do  her  the  justice  to  say  that  she 
seemed  troubled.  But  she  deserted  me.  Never  a  word 
of  protest  against  this  astounding  mockery. 

Afterward  she  explained  to  me  that  jumping  on  Pine 
had  not  seemed  to  her  like  a  profitable  thing  to  do. 
"  You  served  the  occasion  rather  well,"  she  said.  "  Really, 
I  couldn't  have  complimented  you  more  than  by  letting 
you  run  the  affair  as  you  did.  You  were  pretty  rough 
— maybe  insulting  at  one  point.  He  has  his  creed — " 

"  Creed !"  I  shouted  at  her.     "  So  has  crime." 

" — and  he  is  utterly  unfitted  by  the  whole  religion  of 
his  life—" 

"Religion!  You  are  going  into  the  comic.  I've  never 
seen  the  slightest  evidence  of  his  having  any  religion.*' 

"I  mean  that  he  isn't  adapted.  He  would  be  no  use 
at  smashing  anything.  Just  in  the  way.  Why,  Anson, 
you  would  be  worth  six  Pines  in  a  fight!" 

This  may  not  have  been  intended  to  be  crushing,  but 
it  answered  that  purpose. 


VII 

Wincher  happened  to  mention  the  other  night  a  cer 
tain  famous  painter  who  had  placed  on  the  wall  of  a 
room  in  his  country  house  an  immense  picture-frame 
fitted  with  plate  glass.  The  frame  was  adjusted  to  a 
sort  of  window-opening  in  the  wall,  and  from  the  adroit 
ly  contrived  point  of  approach  the  spectator  saw  the 
superb  crisis  of  the  Hudson's  beauty — the  thing  itself,  in 
whatever  mood  it  might  be. 

The  whimsicality  came  into  my  mind  to-day  when  I 
looked  out  upon  New  York  through  a  window  showing 
a  scene  no  painter  would  choose,  unless  he  were  one 
of  those  incorrigible  realists  with  a  passion  for  sodden 
things  who  can  reach  an  exaltation  in  the  presence  of 
the  drab. 

To  tell  how  I  came  to  this  window  I  must  go  back  a 


288  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

little,  back  to  the  week  when  this  journal  seemed  to  re 
cede  in  the  clatter  and  the  Book  wore  the  appearance 
of  a  pathetically  naked  keel  in  a  deserted  shipyard.  (I 
did  think  of  shipyards.  Brakeley  is  working  like  mad 
in  a  shipyard  somewhere  near  Philadelphia,  where  there 
is  a  babel  of  tongues,  and  where  he  is  prouder  of  his 
overalls  than  any  Variot  of  his  gilded  bar.) 

This  was  about  the  time  Sarah  began  to  think  about 
the  Motor  Corps  of  America.  A  wild  thought,  for, 
though  she  runs  a  car  very  well,  there  was  at  that  time 
no  immediate  prospect  of  a  vehicle.  It  is  the  privilege 
of  heroines  in  this  legion  to  furnish  their  own  cars,  and 
some  of  them  steer  sumptuous  shiny  tourers  that  cost 
the  price  of  three  or  four  very  good  farms.  Sarah 
couldn't  know  that  Aunt  Portia  Rowning,  in  a  high  mo 
ment,  would  offer  a  car.  If  it  hadn't  been  Aunt  Portia 
it  would  have  been  some  other  providential  aid.  Sarah 
was  sure  of  that — surer  than  she  was  of  the  geography 
of  New  York.  She  always  had  abhorred  maps.  It  is 
impossible  to  diagram  anything  for  her.  I  fancy  no 
woman  can  really  understand  a  diagram.  But  she  has 
some  other  sense,  nameless  and  inexplicable,  by  which 
she  seems  to  happen  into  the  right  way — or  something 
just  as  good.  After  all,  carrier-pigeons  have  no  maps. 

Sarah  did,  however,  resort  to  a  practical  expedient. 
Without  knowing  what  might  be  taught  to  accepted 
members  of  the  corps,  she  hit  upon  the  plan  of  subsi 
dizing  a  chauffeur  to  belt  Manhattan  with  her,  which 
turned  out  to  be  somewhat  of  an  adventure  in  itself, 
since  the  chauffeur  was  all  but  arrested  for  a  lawless 
turn  (or,  to  be  more  exact,  for  something  he  said  when  he 
was  scolded),  and  came  to  the  brink  of  a  smash  on  West 
Street.  I  received  the  impression  that  Sarah  did  not 
approve  of  the  way  New  York  was  put  together.  She 
had  other  criticisms,  some  of  which  led  me  to  think  that 
I  should  have  to  bail  her  out  a  good  deal. 

Nevertheless,  she  came  home  at  last  in  her  uniform 


THE  BURDEN  289 

and  was  proudly  saluted  by  my  aunt.  I  told  her  I  never 
had  expected  the  novel  excitement  of  kissing  a  chauffeuse. 
The  experience  was  part  of  the  preposterous  revolution. 

Yesterday  she  was  called  at  4.15  A.M.  to  take  a  lieu 
tenant-colonel  somewhere.  She  was  out  of  the  house  in 
twelve  minutes  and  a  half.  When  she  came  home  to 
breakfast  (with  a  shocking  appetite)  her  eyes  were  shining 
beneath  the  peak  of  her  cap  like  twin  sparklers  under 
the  lid  of  a  jewel-case.  .  .  . 

Well,  all  of  this  couldn't  happen  without  a  lot  of  dis 
cussion  and  fussing,  in  the  midst  of  which  there  was 
something  of  Laura,  inscrutably  contemplative  as  in  the 
Pine  incident;  and  Pine  himself  was  visible  at  times — 
visible  rather  than  audible  at  all  moments  when  the  air 
hinted  of  war  talk.  There  was  a  visit  from  Uncle 
George  Rowning  and  Aunt  Portia,  who  were  benevo 
lently  giving  up  Bar  Harbor  for  the  summer  because 
Aunt  Portia  simply  couldn't  get  her  hands  free  of  war 
responsibilities.  When  the  Academy  closed  father 
came  down  for  a  week  before  going  to  a  meeting  of 
Red  Triangle  men  in  Washington.  I  was  then  working 
on  a  Liberty  Loan  committee  and  he  had  suggestions 
for  this  enterprise  that  gave  me  a  new  awe  of  his  shrewd 
ness.  We  went  together  to  Camp  Upton  and  to  some 
of  the  armories  and  docks.  He  appeared  intensely  ab 
sorbed  in  the  cubistically  painted  craft  in  the  bay  and 
rivers.  He  had  a  way  of  coming  stock  still  at  the  curb 
whenever  there  was  a  parade  or  even  a  moving  detach 
ment  of  troops  of  any  sort.  His  way  of  lifting  his  hat  when 
the  flag  went  by,  letting  the  breeze  stir  his  shaggy  hair, 
had  an  impressiveness  for  me  greater  than  any  spectacle 
the  street  could  hold.  It  was  after  some  such  incident 
that  I  noticed  him  walking  absently  along  with  his  hat 
in  his  hand.  He  has  his  hat  off  to  the  war.  He  wanted 
to  talk  to  recruiting-sergeants,  and  to  stand  in  crowds 
before  bulletin-boards  with  face  up,  listening  to  the 
comments.  He  peered  at  bunting  and  booths  and 


290  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

trophies;  at  a  tank  bearing  a  war  spellbinder;  at  a  gun 
under  a  tent  before  the  Library;  at  the  battle-ship  rising 
out  of  the  earth  of  Union  Square  with  the  Jackies'  wash 
flapping  impudently  in  the  sunlight;  at  the  French 
poilus  and  sauntering  shore-leave  sailor-lads,  and  at  the 
kilties  skirling  in  Bryant  Park. 

It  was  too  bad  that  his  visit  couldn't  have  been  timed 
late  enough  to  permit  his  seeing  Sarah  driving  a  general. 
That  stage  had  still  to  be  reached  when  he  went  away. 

My  parting  with  him  at  the  train  left  me  strangely 
uplifted,  tingling  with  a  sense  of  vaguely  imagined  re 
sponsibility.  I  saw  in  this  man  who  had  just  gone 
quietly  about  the  good  business  that  had  fallen  to  him 
that  shining  Expectation  which  draws,  from  those  who 
can  feel,  the  utmost  of  response.  All  initiative,  I  told 
myself,  is  a  form  of  reaction.  Our  boasted  impulses  are 
but  lastly  our  own.  The  expectation  of  a  people  must 
always  contribute  a  powerful  incentive,  yet  I  suppose 
the  most  powerful  incentive  for  any  effort,  however  it 
may  lie  muffled  in  the  fibers  of  individual  consciousness, 
is  to  be  traced  to  expectation  somehow  personified. 

I  could  not  forbear  thinking  of  what  it  would  mean 
to  this  grave  and  gentle  citizen,  uncovered  before  the 
emblem,  had  he  been  permitted  to  watch  a  stalwart  son 
in  soldier  livery  marching  into  the  fire-veined  shadows 
of  service.  I  had  not  then  to  think  of  all  that  Sarah 
was  to  do,  and  how  well  she  was  to  do  it.  She  could  be 
recruited  for  bigger  work  than  that  ...  to  the  limit  of 
opportunity.  She  is  fit  for  anything.  This  man  has  a 
right  to  a  real  son,  too — to  a  soldier  son. 

The  thought  gave  poignancy  even  to  so  commonplace 
a  sight  as  that  of  a  boy  in  khaki  walking  by  with  a 
motherly-looking  woman,  bareheaded,  wearing  a  ging 
ham  apron  over  a  greasy  gray  skirt.  I  looked  after 
them,  followed  them  for  a  while,  watching  the  woman's 
face  as  she  turned  it  to  him  again  and  again  while  he 
swaggered  with  seemingly  imperfect  attention  beside 


THE  BURDEN  291' 

her.  Probably  she  was  asking  him  a  string  of  foolish 
questions  that  did  not  stir  his  interest.  He  would  be 
thinking  of  other  things  or  finding  it  hard  to  think  in 
the  same  way  about  things  that  had  been. 

By  this  time  I  was  over  beyond  Third  Avenue.  Final 
ly  I  turned  down-town  where  the  Second  Avenue  trains 
growled  and  shrieked  over  my  head,  coming  at  last  still 
farther  east  to  find  the  First  Avenue  sidewalk  almost 
impassable.  Women,  torrents  and  eddies  of  women, 
hatless  and  provisional  of  dress,  carrying  babies,  push 
ing  them  in  little  perambulators  or  twisted  by  clinging 
shoals  of  them.  Yes,  I  was  far  away  now  from  the 
Successfully  Single.  .  .  .  Children  darted  and  squirmed 
through  the  interstices,  laughing,  squealing,  throwing 
missiles,  struggling  with  baskets  or  with  smaller  children. 
They  swarmed  about  the  legs  of  a  great  wooden  horse 
half-way  through  the  door  of  a  harness-maker's.  They 
dripped  from  the  ledge  of  a  soda-fountain  where  a  pyra 
midal  woman,  enormous,  enveloping,  whom  one  could 
think  of  only  as  seated,  was  raucously  gossiping  with 
other  women  near  by  while  she  administered  to  the 
horde.  Along  the  curb,  stretching  as  far  as  the  eye 
reached  to  the  south,  were  push-carts,  tightly  wedged 
together,  filled  with  vegetables  and  fruit,  each  after  its 
kind — cabbages  in  one,  onions  in  the  next,  potatoes  in 
the  next,  peaches  or  bananas  beyond,  and  so  through 
endless  iterations.  Doorways  between  the  shops  were 
temporarily  converted  into  stalls,  giving  passage  to  the 
floors  above  only  by  extraordinary  contortions.  .  .  . 

As  I  turned  westward  again  I  saw  the  shoemaker's 
son,  Owen  Drynd,  at  the  opening  of  an  alley.  Some 
thing  about  this  boy  had  made  a  strong  appeal.  It  was 
not  simply  the  attitude  of  eagerness  shown  in  that  dis 
cussion  beside  the  bench  in  his  father's  shop.  There 
was  an  upstanding  manliness  about  him,  a  clean  vigor 
and  frankness  of  look  that  darted  to  me  as  a  thrillingly 
personal  expression  of  the  soldier  instinct  at  its  best. 


292  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

It  may  have  been  the  things  that  were  in  my  mind,  or 
a  flash  of  something  infectious  in  the  boy  himself,  that 
gave  me  the  sudden  wish  that  he  could  have  his  way. 

He  carried  his  coat  on  his  arm  and  had  just  reached 
to  lift  up  a  fallen  child  when  he  caught  sight  of  me. 
There  was  a  glance  that  told  of  a  debate  as  to  whether 
properly  he  should  recognize  me.  I  was  glad  that  he 
felt  assured — that  he  found  the  recognition  waiting. 

I  halted  before  him,  at  the  same  time  becoming  aware 
of  the  length  of  the  alley  and  the  brick  rear  house. 

"Ain't  you  lost?"  he  asked,  awkwardly.  "Away  over 
here." 

"I'm  following  the  sun  now,"  I  said.  "I  belong  some 
where  over  that  way." 

"My  palace,"  he  remarked,  with  a  movement  of  the 
head  that  indicated  the  brick  rear  house. 

"And  your  work?" 

"Over  just  the  other  side  of  Broadway.  Only  takes 
me  ten  minutes." 

"Better  than  hanging  on  a  strap." 

"Sure." 

"I  remember  that  you  have  a  baby.  Your  father 
spoke  of  it." 

He  smiled  aridly  with  another  nod  toward  the  alley. 
"M'  wife  reminds  me  of  that  every  once  in  a  while  .  .  . 
when  I  say  anything  about  enlisting." 

"You  still  think  of  that?"  I  asked  him. 

"Do  I?"  His  face  changed.  "Yes,  I  think  of  it. 
Why  wouldn't  I?" 

"Of  course.  No  one  could  blame  you  for  thinking 
of  it." 

"She  does."  He  turned  half  about  and  stared  up 
the  street. 

"And  yet  you  can't  quite  blame  her,  either,  can 
you?" 

"Maybe  not.     Oh  no!" 

"When  a  girl  is  tied  down — " 


THE  BURDEN  293 

"Oh,  I  hear  that,  all  right!" 

"It  isn't  as  if  she  could  go  to  work — " 

"  Work  doesn't  suit  her,  anyway.  She  ain't  that  kind. 
I  ain't  kickin'.  I  like  her  well  enough.  But  she  don't 
need  to  holler  so  much  about  it.  Starts  it  herself  when 
I  read  the  paper.  If  it  wasn't  for  the  kid  .  .  ." 

"That's  just  it,"  I  said.     "The  kid." 

"It  don't  bother  her  much.  She  leaves  it  at  her 
mother's  'most  every  day  so's  she  can  go  to  the  movies. 
Sometimes  she  ain't  here  when  I  get  home.  No  supper 
or  anything." 

"After  all,  Drynd,"  I  said,  "if  you  had  the  job  of  a 
baby  you  would  like  to  break  away — " 

"Maybe  I  would.  But  the  baby  is  her  job,  ain't  it? 
'Ain't  I  got  my  job?" 

"What  is  your  job?     What  do  you  do?" 

"Uniforms  now,"  he  said.  "They  used  to  make  rain 
coats.  But  now  it's  all  uniforms." 

"You're  a  journeyman  tailor?" 

"No.  I  ain't  a  journeyman."  He  grinned.  "I  was 
in  the  packing  first.  Now  I  got  a  machine.  Buttons 
mostly — and  pockets.  It's  easy  enough — and  we  get 
pretty  good  money  now.  I  wouldn't  care.  .  .  .  But  uni 
forms  .  .  .  they  get  my  goat.  Know  what  I  mean?" 

"I  understand." 

The  obsession  made  obvious  signs  in  his  face. 

"I  tell  you  when  things  get  worse — when  something 
happens — I  won't  know  what  to  do.  It  ain't  to  go  away 
from  her,  you  understand.  Everything  was  all  right 
till  I  got  to  thinkin'  about  the  war  and  seein'  them  go. 
And  she'd  get  money.  The  pay  is  split  up.  Of  course 
she'll  say  it  ain't  enough.  I  guess  it  ain't.  But  I  know 
a  woman  who'll  take  good  care  of  the  kid.  And  she  could 
get  her  old  job  in  the  paper  boxes.  Easy.  And  I'd 
have  a  chance." 

"I've  a  better  idea,"  I  said. 

"A  what?" 

20 


294  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"A  better  plan.     You  want  to  go." 

"Sometimes  I  think  I  got  to  go!"  He  thrust  his 
hands  in  his  pockets  with  a  jerk  of  his  shoulders. 

Afterward,  I  will  admit,  my  impulse  figured  rather 
fantastically.  At  that  moment  it  seemed  quite  inevi 
table.  The  fact  is  that  he  stood  there  as  the  essential 
image — ready,  eager,  capable.  He  could  be  that  which 
I  could  not  be.  He  would  be  not  merely  the  form  and 
mechanism  of  a  defender,  but  the  flaming  spirit  of  fight 
ing  will.  If  I  made  it  possible  for  him  to  go  it  seemed 
that  it  might  be  as  if  he  carried  with  him  something  of 
myself.  For  that  moment  I  was  able  to  forget  every 
thing  but  the  great  shining  thing  that  is  not  practical 
at  all,  it  may  be,  but  that  belongs  with  everything  that 
we  must  hold  with  our  eyes.  I  could  see  a  way  of  tak 
ing  part,  a  way  that  would  seem  real.  Such  things  had 
been  done,  though  it  is  only  since  that  day  that  I  have 
recalled  vague  impressions  of  similar  expedients.  To 
have  recalled  anything  at  that  time  would  not  have  mat 
tered  one  way  or  the  other,  except  as  a  help  in  arguing 
with  Drynd.  I  could  see  only  Drynd,  with  a  great  de 
sire — not  a  Pine,  or  a  Grayl,  or  a  Mr.  Crook  or  any 
other  imaginable  types  not  to  be  counted  upon,  but 
only  the  one  who  was  ready  and  who  spelled  the  Answer 
to  that  call  from  across  the  sea. 

"Suppose,  Drynd,"  I  said,  "that  a  man  who  can't  go 
himself  were  to  make  it  possible  for  you  to  go,  in  a  way 
that  would  make  you  feel  that  it  was  all  right  to  let  him 
do  it?" 

He  looked  at  me  blankly. 

"Suppose  the  man  took  your  job  and  turned  the 
money  over  to  your  wife  and  baby." 

"This  ain't  a  joke,"  he  shot  out,  resentfully. 

"No,"  I  said,  "it  isn't  intended  for  a  joke.  I'm  seri 
ous.  I'd  be  a  fool  to  take  up  your  work — " 

"Do  you  mean  you?"  He  took  his  hands  out  of  his 
pockets  and  stared  down  at  me  with  a  new  perplexity. 


THE  BURDEN  295 

"Yes,"  I  said.  "I'm  the  man  who  can't  go  himself. 
I'm  not  the  right  size — and  shape.  You  are.  It  would 
be  a  perfect  bargain.  It  will  be  a  great  thing  for  my 
education.  It  will  teach  me  about  useful  things.  And 
I'll  have  a  good  time  thinking,  'There's  that  fellow  Drynd 
over  there  doing  my  fighting  for  me.'  You  see  it  would 
be  just  a  swap.  /  ought  to  be  fighting.  /  haven't  any 
wife  or  baby.  And  there  you  are." 

His  lips  moved,  but  quite  silently. 


VIII 

Naturally  he  thought  I  was  a  "little  off,"  even  after 
he  had  said,  "If  you  ain't  kiddin'  .  .  ."  and  had  been 
convinced  of  my  seriousness.  We  sat  on  the  steps  of 
that  back  tenement,  in  the  gray  well  among  the  houses 
gilded  at  the  top  by  the  late  sun,  and  I  argued  some  of 
the  puzzled  lines  out  of  his  face.  Not  by  way  of  in 
tensifying  his  wish  to  go.  This  was  unnecessary.  The 
whole  thing  began  with  my  assurance  as  to  this  wish, 
and  as  to  something  fine  in  it.  Yet  there  was  his  pride, 
and  also  certain  little  skepticisms;  as  to  myself,  un 
known  to  him  and  to  be  looked  at  twice  as  a  queer  fish, 
certainly  .  .  .  offering  to  take  a  man's  job  and  turn  over 
the  wages  to  that  man's  wife;  and  as  to  the  wife,  it  may 
be.  What  would  she  say  about  this?  How  nasty 
could  she  be,  money  and  all?  Would  the  thing  look 
crazy,  to  his  father,  for  example — crazier  than  just 
going  and  enlisting  and  putting  all  the  results  up  to 
Uncle  Sam? 

Even  starting  with  the  money  as  a  real  fact,  there 
was  the  matter  of  showing  why  it  was  his  job  that  should 
be  the  basis  of  the  game.  That  surely  would  have  a 
funny  look,  and  I  had  to  make  this  clear — as  clear  as 
it  had  suddenly  become  to  me. 

"You  see,  Drynd,"  I  said,  "I  have  my  side,  too.  I 
must  get  something  out  of  this — " 


296  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"How?  ..."  This  thrust  him  quite  back  again  into 
mystification. 

"I'm  as  honest  as  you  are  about  wanting  to  do  some 
thing.  We  both  want  to  feel  right.  Now  I  could  go 
and  work  at  anything — in  a  shipyard  or  a  munition- 
factory — and  get  money  and  turn  that  over." 

"You'd  get  bigger  money,"  ventured  Drynd. 

"I  suppose  I  would,  but  it  wouldn't  be  the  same.  I 
wouldn't  have  the  same  feeling.  I  don't  think  I  could 
keep  going  quite  so  well.  I  don't  think  that  it  would 
feel  quite  the  same  to  you.  You'll  be  doing  my  work. 
I'll  be  doing  your  work." 

"I  see,"  said  Drynd. 

I  knew  that  he  saw  something.  His  look  began  to 
make  this  plain.  What  I  saw  was  a  curious  envelop 
ment  of  the  simple  figure.  It  was  for  me  as  if  a  new 
image  had  grown  there  against  the  gray  of  that  pit. 
The  same  Drynd,  the  same  black-haired,  deep-eyed, 
shabby-garmented  boy  of  the  alley,  but  with  a  light 
upon  him — with  a  light  in  him.  ...  A  soldier,  not  made 
by  machinery,  but  born  from  the  soul  of  a  people.  A 
soldier  who  would  carry  a  patriot's  flame  lanterned  in  a 
brave  body.  A  soldier  who  made  no  bargain  save  the 
bargain  that  gave  him  liberty  to  serve.  .  .  . 

It  is  true  that  he  changed  markedly  before  me.  It 
was  natural  that  he  should.  The  proposition  was  ob 
viously  queer;  the  person  who  made  it  was  still  obscure 
and,  despite  his  explanations,  still  to  be  proved.  Yet 
the  proposition  was  there,  pointing,  pushing  back  the 
obstacles,  or  seeming  to  do  that,  and  giving  his  imagina 
tion  its  first  free  outlook.  And  while  he  himself  still 
sat,  nervously  thumbing  a  button  on  the  coat  that  lay 
over  his  knees,  his  imagination  seemed  to  stand,  to 
straighten  itself  fully,  throwing  off  in  experimental  dar 
ing  all  the  hampering  things,  and  to  be  looking  with  a 
half-awed,  half-chuckling  straightness  into  the  future. 
My  notion  was,  I  told  him,  that  our  little  arrange- 


THE  BURDEN  297 

ment  ought  to  be  somewhat  of  a  secret,  and  this  brought 
him  around  quickly  with  the  question,  "What  would  I 
say  to  her?" 

What  should  he  say  to  her?  If  he  had  been  skeptical 
she  would  be  more  so. 

"You  might  say,"  I  ventured,  "simply  that  your 
wages  would  be  sent  over  to  her  every  week  from  the 
shop.  In  many  cases — " 

He  broke  into  a  joyous  laugh.  "She'd  never  be 
lieve  that!  No,  not  Vicky!  She'd  know  something 
was  up." 

What  Vicky  would  think  was,  after  all,  the  only  rea 
sonable  excuse  for  a  secret,  excepting,  perhaps,  the  shop. 
And,  if  it  came  to  that,  maybe  the  truth  would  be  as 
easy  and  as  satisfactory  as  anything  else.  Why  not 
simply  tell  her  the  fact?  We  talked  over  this  possibility. 
Perhaps  it  might  seem  more  plausible,  less  freakish,  less 
open  to  suspicion  of  a  trick,  if  she  were  made  to  under 
stand  that  this  sort  of  thing  was  to  be  expected — that  a 
lot  of  unusual  things  were  done  in  war-time. 

As  to  this — making  her  believe  that  anything  of  the 
kind  might  be  done  elsewhere — Drynd  was  doubtful. 
"It's  awful  hard  to  make  her  believe  anything,"  was  his 
summing  up  of  Vicky.  "But  if  she  was  sure  of  the 
money — " 

He  seemed  to  regret  having  let  this  slip  out.  "I 
don't  mean — "  he  added. 

"I  understand,"  I  said.  "We  must  make  her  sure  of 
the  money.  Isn't  that  it?  Of  course.  It's  like  making 
the  baby  sure  of  the  money,  too.  Anyway,  I  want  you 
to  think  it  over  and  we  might  get  together  again — say 
to-morrow  night,  at  your  father's  shop." 

He  frowned  with  an  uneasy  shift  of  his  shoulders. 

"The  old  man—" 

"We  can  talk  it  over  together.  If  we're  right  he  will 
be  with  us.  I'm  positive.  I  know  about  fathers." 

"There's  mothers,  too,"  said  Drynd.     "The  funny 


298  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

thing  is  she's  for  it.  Oh,  nobody's  stopping  me,  ex 
cepting  .  .  ." 

I  followed  his  glance  through  the  alley.  A  girl  carry 
ing  a  baby  was  hurrying  in.  The  girl  had  a  hat  with 
a  wide,  flapping  brim.  Her  yellow  hair  came  forward  in 
two  spirals  over  her  cheeks.  Her  skirt  was  very  short. 
There  were  shiny  buckles  on  her  slippers.  This  is  all  I 
can  remember  of  the  way  she  looked  then. 

"That's  her,"  said  Drynd. 

We  arose.  I  had  thought  of  Mrs.  Drynd  as  up-stairs 
somewhere.  There  seemed  to  be  an  awkwardness  about 
meeting  her.  I  put  out  my  hand  to  Drynd. 

"Good-by,"  I  said.     "To-morrow  night." 

IX 

Drynd's  father  was  the  great  surprise.  "I  knew  he 
would  do  it,"  he  said.  He  even  appeared  to  take  the 
son  part  of  it  for  granted.  It  was  my  part  that  puzzled 
him;  or  at  least  that  part  saved  him  from  the  direct 
embarrassment  of  acquiring  new  terms  with  the  son. 

"A  man  might  call  you  a  damn  fool,"  he  said  to  me. 

A  man  might.  This  was  indubitable.  Old  Drynd 
seemed  far  from  saying  that  he  would.  That  was  some 
thing  to  start  with.  I  think  he  was  less  baffled  when  he 
found  that  I  could  laugh  about  it — that  I  seemed  to  be 
as  elated  as  Owen. 

We  went  over  the  affair  as  a  matter  of  business.  The 
shoemaker  seemed  entirely  confident.  I  offered  to 
leave  with  him  a  hundred  dollars  as  a  little  fund  to 
illustrate  my  intentions.  But  old  Drynd  brushed  aside 
the  suggestion. 

"  It  ain't  necessary,  or  right.  It's  bad  enough  for  you 
to  work  for  nothing.  .  .  .  You,  no  relation — a  stranger." 

"No  relation,"  I  said,  "but  not  a  stranger.  There 
<are  no  strangers  in  a  war;  only  friends  and  foes." 

"You're  right — you're  right!"     He  fumbled  with  his 


THE  BURDEN  299 

pectacles  and  caught  hold  of  my  hand.  "By  God! 
That's  true,  too,  ain't  it?  Friends  or  foes." 

I  was  for  leaving  them  together  to  have  it  out,  but 
Owen  hurried  after  me. 

"She — she  wants  to  see  you,"  he  said. 

"Your  wife?" 

"Yes." 

"How  did  she  take  it?" 

"It  was  the  way  I  said.  She  won't  believe  it.  That's 
why  she  wants  to  see  you." 

I  assented  to  going  over  with  him  at  once.  He  was 
greatly  excited  in  a  quiet  way.  He  was  going  into  the 
artillery,  he  said.  After  thinking  of  it  all  night  that 
was  what  he  had  decided  to  do.  He  didn't  say  "all 
day."  I  found  out  why  before  I  left  him. 

He  opened  his  door  on  the  first  landing  confidently, 
with  a  kind  of  swagger.  There  was  a  staring  lamp  on 
a  center-table  with  a  bright-red  cloth.  The  room  had 
an  unkempt  tawdriness.  There  were  loud-colored, 
spotty  things  in  it.  I  remember  a  fearfully  red  rocking- 
chair,  and  a  colored  print  of  a  dancer  in  a  foolish  gilt 
frame. 

The  blond  girl  came  out  of  the  back  room  as  if  at 
the  sound  from  the  door.  She  reviewed  me,  up  and 
down,  with  an  unmitigated  deliberation. 

"This  is  Mr.  Grayl,  Vicky." 

"  Y'  little  devil!"  she  spat  at  me.  "I  just  wanted  to 
get  a  good  look  at  yer." 

Drynd  took  a  leaping  step  toward  her.  "Listen  here !" 
he  roared,  angrily. 

"Shut  up,  you!"  she  shouted  back.  "Y*  poor  simp, 
yer.  Shut  up!  So  this  here's  the  one  that's  trying  to 
loor  y'  away  from  your  wife  and  child.  My  Gawd! 
I'd  'a'  thought  y'  had  more—" 

He  caught  her  by  the  arm.  "Stop  that!  D'y'  hear? 
This  man—" 

She  shook  him  off.     "Man  nuthin'.    He  ain't  a  man 


300  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

at  all.  I  didn't  see  him  good  yesterday.  But  he's 
just  what  I  thought.  Just  exactly."  She  looked  at  me 
squarely.  "Y'poor — " 

"Will  yer  listen  to  me?"  demanded  Drynd,  standing 
now  between  us  with  his  hands  clenched. 

"No,  I  won't  listen  t'  yer.  Not  me.  I'm  tired  listen- 
in'  t'  yer,  y'  poor  simp.  I'm  goin'  t'  have  somethin'  tj 
say  to  this  little  sneakin' — " 

Drynd  lifted  a  hand  and  swung  it  as  if  cutting  off  the 
talk. 

"I've  enlisted.  D'  y'get  that?  Enlisted.  To-day. 
It's  all  done.  I'm  an  enlisted  man."  He  turned  to  me. 
"I'm  awful  sorry,  Mr.—" 

She  gave  a  peculiarly  piercing  squeal.  Anger  pre 
vented  it,  I  fancy,  from  being  a  genuine  shriek.  She 
caught  him,  swinging  him  around,  and  glared  at  him  in  a 
red  and  yellow  frenzy.  "Enlisted?  .  .  .  You  enlisted?" 

Drynd  nodded.  "To-day.  Best  thing.  Stops  all  the 
talk." 

"You  liar!— liar!" 

Strangely,  from  the  moment  the  girl  had  begun  to 
attack  me,  and  now,  of  course,  the  more  definitely  as  she 
fixed  her  anger  upon  him,  my  distress  centered  in  Drynd. 
It  was  pitiful  to  see  his  look  turn  from  her  eyes  to  mine, 
speechlessly.  At  the  beginning  1  could  feel  his  conscious 
ness  that  I  was  there.  She  had  surprised  him,  caught 
him  unprepared  to  wrangle  in  the  presence  of  another, 
and  he  fumbled  desperately  under  the  pain  of  the  situa 
tion.  An  ugly  twist  came  to  his  lips. 

"Liar!"  she  screamed  again,  clutching  at  his  shirt 
and  thrusting  out  her  hand  with  a  movement  that 
amounted  to  a  blow. 

Like  mockery  of  her  treble  came  the  thin  cry  of  a 
baby  from  the  room  beyond. 

She  thrust  again  at  Drynd  to  place  herself  where  she 
could  level  her  flame  at  me. 

"Yer  hear  that,  do  yer,  Mr.  Sawed  Off?    That's  his 


THE  BURDEN  301 

dear  little  baby  boy  that  yer  gettin'  him  away  from, 
damn  yer.  You're  a  nice — " 

Drynd  caught  her  by  the  arm.     "Say!"  ...  he  began. 

But  she  swung  loose.  "Lemme  alone!  I'm  glad  yer 
goin'.  I  hope  yer  get  killed  the  first  thing.  Good  fer 
yer.  Good  for  yer!" 

"  Will  you  let  me  say  a  word,  Mrs.  Drynd?"  I  ventured, 
at  last. 

"  No !"  she  shouted.  "  Don't  yer  dare  say  a  damn  word 
or  I'll — "  She  choked  over  this,  glaring  at  me,  quiver 
ing  in  her  fury.  "Yer  said  yer  words  to  him,  all  right, 
didn't  yer?  A  crazy  man.  Y'  ought  to  be  locked  up." 

I  turned  to  the  door.  My  heart  was  beating  violently. 
Without  guessing  what  Drynd  might  be  able  to  do  if 
I  were  not  there,  I  knew  that  my  quickest  leave-taking 
was  most  to  be  desired.  He  strode  quickly  after  me 
into  the  entry. 

"I'm  awful  sorry — " 

I  made  a  sign  that  there  should  be  no  other  thing 
said. 

"I'll  see  you  to-morrow,"  he  whispered.  . . . 


That  odious  scene  quite  staggered  me— filled  me  with 
a  sense  of  guilt  and  perplexity.  The  girl's  insults,  the 
picture  of  her  vulgar  fury,  of  her  doll  face  working  in 
its  passion  of  resentment — the  rage  of  the  circumvented 
mate,  clawing  and  screaming;  Drynd's  nasty  predica 
ment,  the  cry  from  the  child,  cutting  in  with  its  primor 
dial  protest — these  sent  me  into  the  street  with  a  be 
draggled  dismay.  The  echo  of  that  squeal  followed  me. 
It  accused — held  me  responsible  for  the  mess.  A  cul 
prit  horror  dogged  me  through  streets  I  didn't  know. 
Here  was  St.  Mark's  Church  at  last.  ...  I  was  drifting 
down-town.  Not  to  go  home  too  soon — that  seemed  to 
be  imperative.  I  must  have  walked  several  miles. 


302  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

There  was  a  weak  moment  in  which  I  thought  of 
going  to  find  Zorn.  But  there  could  be  no  adjudication 
now.  Drynd  had  ended  that.  He  had  enlisted.  It  was 
his  way  of  dodging  the  onus  of  debate.  When  worst 
came  to  worst  for  him  he  would  not  have  to  call  his 
resolution;  it  would  have  been  sent  upon  its  business. 

I  had  made  a  bargain.  The  blond  girl  didn't  matter. 
She  was  complicating,  but  she  couldn't  alter  the  bar 
gain.  I  had  planned  making  terms  at  Drynd's  work 
place  and  of  proceeding  with  a  certain  order  in  leading 
up  to  the  fulfilment.  Now  everything  was  twisted 
about — wretchedly  twisted.  And  something  awkward 
and  all  but  ludicrous  seemed  to  have  thrust  aside  the 
beautiful  thing  I  had  dreamed. 

With  this  feeling,  the  matter  of  going  with  Drynd  to 
offer  myself  as  his  substitute  became  a  miserable  inci 
dent.  It  even  began  to  look  precarious.  How  could  I 
be  sure  that  there  would  not  be  a  contemptuous  refusal? 
If  they  denied  me  there  would  remain  a  money  way  of 
making  good,  but  literally  taking  his  place  had  seized 
my  imagination,  and  to  be  frustrated  in  that  visioned 
itself  as  a  complete  wreckage  of  an  ideal. 

As  I  look  back  I  can  see  that  my  anxiety  was  quite 
of  a  piece  with  all  that  had  happened  in  my  thoughts. 
I  did  not  wish  merely  to  do  the  convenient  thing,  the 
thing  that  might  so  easily  have  served  to  salve  the  con 
science,  or  hush  ulterior  criticism.  I  was  removed  from 
the  privilege  of  advancing  in  the  spotlight,  of  being  called 
or  tempted  to  the  glory  line  of  effort.  There  could  be 
no  swank,  or  spectacle,  or  hurrah,  or  flame-knit  com 
radeship.  The  tests  of  the  great  game  were  for  others. 
But  there  is  another  game,  not  less  real,  in  which  I 
wanted  to  play  my  part  honorably.  I  knew  that  there 
could  be  a  sort  of  swank  in  this  game,  too.  Perhaps  I 
was  absurdly  self-conscious  about  this  point.  Yet  I 
kept  on  longing  to  meet  the  situation  which  should  say 
to  me,  imperatively,  "This  is  your  opportunity!"  I  kept 


THE  BURDEN  303 

on  longing  to  have  this  opportunity  happen — to  have  it 
stand  clear  and  commanding  when  it  did  happen.  I 
suppose  we  watch  for  Opportunity  as  a  girl  dreams  of 
her  appointed  hero  or  a  man  visions  the  one  right 
woman — as  if  Tightness  would  loom  with  a  nimbus,  or 
at  least  be  advertised  by  some  unmistakable  aura,  pecul 
iar  and  assuring.  And  then  there  stood  Drynd,  seem 
ing,  of  a  sudden,  and  with  the  simple  conclusiveness  of 
a  miracle,  to  be  the  very  sentry  of  chance  challenging 
me  for  the  password  of  my  faith.  .  .  . 

Looking  back  upon  the  first  day  in  the  workshop,  I 
can  see  that  my  trepidation  belonged  not  merely  to  the 
emotion  of  that  decision,  but  also  to  the  confusion  pro 
duced  by  the  blond  girl  with  spiral  cheek-curls.  Her 
yellow  head  was  not  to  be  dismissed  from  the  picture, 
even  after  Drynd's  assurance  upon  that  following  day 
that  she  had  "let  up  on  the  dirty  stuff."  She  remained 
as  a  menace.  The  memory  of  her  angry  face  hovered 
threateningly.  I  never  had  faced  a  look  of  hatred,  and 
such  a  memory  could  not  be  shaken  free.  For  him, 
bound  by  the  narrow  terms  of  a  single  day's  liberty, 
there  was  certain  to  be  some  kind  of  let-up,  perhaps 
even  a  mushy  contrition.  Possibly  she  pawed  him  over 
and  wept  martyr  tears.  For  me  there  must  survive 
something  quite  different.  Her  thought  of  me  would 
gather  up  all  the  ugly  lines  of  her  indignation.  She 
would  think  of  me  not  merely  as  a  means  of  offense,  but 
as  an  instigator.  She  would  forget  altogether  that 
Drynd  wanted  to  go  and  had  hovered  so  long  and  so 
impatiently  at  the  brink.  She  may  even  have  con 
cluded  that  I  put  the  idea  into  his  mind.  I  was  the 
conspirator,  the  arch-devil  of  her  difficulties. 

Even  after  I  sent  that  first  week's  money  by  Drynd's 
workshop  friend,  Lorkey,  the  boy  with  the  rasping  voice 
and  the  woolly  black  hair,  I  had  no  feeling  of  a  relieved 
tension  of  hate.  It  was  easy  to  imagine  a  sneering 
bitterness  as  added  to  all  that  had  gone  before.  Lorkey 


304  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

brought  back  on  the  Monday  morning  no  comment 
except  to  say,  simply,  "I  gave  her  that,  all  right."  He 
may  have  expected  me  to  ask  questions.  I  let  the 
point  go  by  thanking  him.  He  was  the  accepted  inter 
mediary.  Drynd  had  the  utmost  confidence  in  him. 
I  assumed  that  this  confidence  applied  not  only  to  his 
integrity,  but  to  his  entire  serviceability  in  the  matter 
of  contact.  The  method  and  the  person  were  both 
Drynd's  suggestion.  I  felt  that  I  wanted  to  follow  his 
plan  to  the  letter.  If  he  had  wished  me  to  carry  the 
money  in  person  I  think  that  in  my  state  of  mind  at  the 
moment  I  should  have  promised  to  do  so.  As  it  was, 
Lorkey  smoothed  the  way.  It  was  a  primitive  way,  yet 
direct  and  conclusive  .  .  .  real  money,  by  hand. 

My  induction  into  the  clothing-factory  of  Sallison  & 
Co.  was  rather  quickly  accomplished.  Drynd's  part  had 
to  be  done  quickly  in  view  of  his  obligations  to  the  United 
States  of  America.  Normally  the  thing  would  have  been 
a  huge  embarrassment  to  him.  Under  simpler  condi 
tions  his  awkwardness  certainly  would  have  been  funnier 
than  it  was.  But  it  was  plain  that  an  elated  detachment 
from  the  whole  problem  of  ordinary  work,  an  end-of- 
the-job  feeling  of  suspended  responsibility,  as  well  as 
a  sense  of  a  waiting  adventure  spreading  its  extraordi 
nary  panorama,  were  dulling  the  edge  of  his  awkward 
ness. 

Since  I  have  become  accustomed  to  old  Sallison  I  can 
surmise  something  of  his  feeling  when  he  came  to  the 
doorway  of  the  easterly  workroom  on  that  first  day  and 
peered  at  me  with  rapt  immobility.  Sallison  is  a  tall- 
ish,  gray  man,  a  little  stooped,  with  a  short,  eccentric 
mustache,  varying  in  color  from  sandy  to  white,  and 
growing  at  all  angles.  His  circular  horn-rimmed  glasses 
have  the  effect  of  belonging  to  the  wide  expression  of  his 
eyes.  He  seems  always  to  wear  smoke-colored  clothes, 
and  always  to  have  a  small  red  flower,  usually  a  pink, 
in  the  lapel  of  his  coat.  He  always  takes  off  his  coat 


THE  BURDEN  305 

immediately  on  coming  into  the  office,  hanging  it  on  a 
certain  nail,  behind  his  desk,  beside  a  heavily  framed, 
faded  picture  of  a  knight  in  armor. 

Sallison  was  the  first  person  I  saw  when  I  came  into 
the  place  with  Drynd.  This  was  because  he  happened 
to  be  standing,  with  his  thumbs  in  the  armholes  of  his 
vest,  looking  out  of  a  certain  window. 

But  it  was  not  Sallison  who  gave  me  the  job.  The 
negotiations  resulting  in  this  momentous  matter  were 
conducted  with  a  younger  man  who  took  the  suggestion 
rather  blankly.  Evidently  he  was  annoyed  by  the  loss 
of  Drynd.  Also  it  was  evident  that  new  help  was  scarce 
enough  to  favor  an  applicant.  Drynd's  eagerness  to 
carry  forward  the  plan  gave  him  a  breathlessly  earnest 
air  that  might  readily  have  betrayed  a  situation  more 
urgent  than  a  wish  to  favor  a  friend.  I  was  a  friend  of 
his  who  wanted  work  at  once.  That  was  the  way  of 
it.  I  didn't  know  the  clothing  business.  But  I  was 
smart.  Drynd  gave  definite  assurance  of  this. 

Heiser  also  wears  horn-rimmed  glasses,  which  at  first 
had  the  effect  of  relating  him  to  Sallison.  Yet  I  knew 
that  he  was  not  of  the  firm,  because  Drynd,  in  that  hur 
ried  talk  on  the  way  to  the  place — there  was  too  much 
else  to  leave  room  for  many  details  of  the  work — had 
told  me  that  Heiser  was  the  manager,  the  man  with 
whom  we  should  have  to  put  it  over. 

Heiser  looked  at  me  dubiously,  as  I  thought.  He  is 
a  stocky  man  of  thirty -odd,  with  curly  black  hair,  a  fresh 
complexion,  and  even,  white  teeth.  Suddenly  he  said: 
"All  right.  When  can  you  go  to  work?" 

"I'm  ready,"  I  said. 

"You'll  have  to  join  the  union.  This  is  a  union 
shop." 

"  I'm  ready,"  I  repeated,  but  I  was  a  bit  puzzled  about 
this. 

"We'll  try  you  out,"  continued  Heiser.  "A  few 
days.  If  you  get  on  all  right  the  delegate  will  talk 


306  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

with  you."  He  turned  to  Drynd.  "So  you're  going  to 
be  a  soldier." 

Drynd  prinned  his  relief.     "Sure  thing,"  he  said. 

"Well,"  remarked  Heiser,  "I  thought  you  would." 

"I  have  to  report  at  twelve  o'clock.  I  got  twenty- 
four  hours." 

"So.  Twenty-four  hours.  You  enlisted  yesterday. 
That's  how  it  was." 

Drynd  nodded. 

"Say — maybe — have  you  got  some  time,  then? 
Twelve  o'clock  you  say?" 

"But  I  want  to  go  home  again,"  said  Drynd. 

"Of  course.  That's  right.  But  twelve  o'clock- 
could  you  show  this  man  just  what  you've  been  doing? 
Half  an  hour.  The  button-machine — Berg  will  show 
him  the  machine."  He  turned  to  me.  "You  know 
there's  a  machine  to  learn,  don't  you?" 

"I'll  learn  it,"  I  said. 

"Sure!"  declared  Drynd.  "That  ain't  much  to  learn 
— not  the  button-machine.  I'll  show  him  everything 
I  been  doing." 

"Tell  him  all  you  know,"  advised  Heiser,  with  a  vio 
lent  wink.  "That  won't  take  you  too  long!" 

And  then  at  ten  o'clock  Drynd  went  away,  after 
shaking  hands  with  every  one  in  the  two  workrooms  and 
lastly  with  Heiser  and  Sallison.  A  lame  man  at  one  of 
the  two-needle  machines  held  his  hand  for  a  long  time 
and  said  earnest  things  to  him  in  a  low  voice,  with  lips 
close  to  his  ear.  One  of  the  girls  patted  him  on  the  cheek, 
giggling  loudly.  A  wrinkled  man  in  a  black  alpaca  coat 
handed  him  the  wages  due  him  for  three  days'  work — 
an  incident  that  occasioned  an  exchange  of  glances  be 
tween  us,  for  Drynd  had  wondered,  in  our  talk  about 
money,  whether  this  would  happen  without  longer 
notice. 

"Good-by!"  he  shouted  from  the  door  to  the  street 
stairway. 


THE  BURDEN  307 

The  lame  man,  who  had  bent  over  his  machine, 
looked  up  and  stared  through  the  nearest  window  for 
several  seconds. 

XI 

When  my  aunt  stopped  laughing  she  made  a  rather 
reassuring  remark. 

"Do  you  know,  Anson,  in  some  ways  this  looks  like 
the  most  sensible  thing  you  ever  did." 

The  inference  as  to  some  other  ways  in  which  it  did 
not  look  so  sensible  she  passed  over,  doubtless  because 
these  ways  were  obvious  enough.  Not  to  accentuate 
the  complications  I  avoided  emphasis  as  to  the  matter 
of  Drynd's  wife.  That  matter  seemed  to  be  fortuitous. 
Properly  Vicky  didn't  belong  to  the  issue,  though  she 
occupied  so  prominent  a  place  in  my  feelings.  1  mean 
that  her  particular  violence  was  not  to  be  considered  as 
belonging  to  the  group  of  things  either  Drynd  or  I 
had  reason  to  consider  at  the  beginning.  Since  he 
already  had  enlisted  when  her  violence  came  on,  there 
had  been  no  way  of  making  a  consideration  of  that. 

My  aunt's  point  was  that  the  shop  would  teach  me 
something  I  needed  to  know.  She  didn't  urge  that  I 
was  a  dreamer  or  theorist  who  needed  to  put  his  hands 
into  reality.  Perhaps  she  let  this  go  as  not  needing  to 
be  said,  and  as  applying  to  all  of  us.  She  was  thinking, 
I  am  sure — for  the  sympathetic  twinkle  lurked  in  the 
shade  of  her  look — that  my  personal  crisis  had  its  rights, 
its  need  of  a  fling  if  not  of  a  fight,  and  going  into  the 
workshop  partook  somewhat  of  the  character  of  both. 

Despite  her  laugh,  I  am  sure  that  Aunt  Paul  gathered 
that  I  was  taking  the  thing  very  seriously.  In  fact,  the 
laugh  may  have  had  something  to  do  with  a  conviction 
of  this  sort.  I  suppose  it  has  its  funny  side.  If  it  had 
not,  possibly  I  couldn't  have  laughed  with  her. 

Yet  on  that  first  day,  in  the  evening  of  which  I  made 
my  confession  to  her,  I  had  a  lump  in  my  throat;  par- 


308  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

ticularly  in  the  period  immediately  following  Drynd's 
"Good-by!"  at  the  door,  when  I  realized  that  I  must 
go  it  alone;  when  the  drone  of  the  machines  rose  in 
one  of  those  obscuring  hazes  of  sound  that  appal  the 
groping  mind.  I  had  no  repugnance  to  manual  labor. 
On  the  contrary,  I  found  myself  longing  for  the  contact. 
But  I  was  constrained  by  a  sense  of  incompetence,  a 
sense  of  an  immense  mystery  of  detail,  and  of  a  terrify 
ing  hurry.  The  sounds  hurried.  I  remember  my  first 
impression  of  one  man — his  name  is  Troke,  Axel  Troke, 
a  man  with  a  fierce,  closely  cropped  head — who  was 
stitching  certain  parts  of  marine  coats,  stitching  violently, 
on  one  coat  after  another,  lifting  from  one  heap  and 
throwing  with  his  right  hand  toward  a  second  heap 
that  would  in  turn  come  to  a  workman  farther  along. 
The  dexterous,  second-clipping  way  in  which  Troke 
grasped  a  coat,  swung  it  to  bring  the  seams  he  was  to 
stitch  under  the  blur  of  his  machine  needle,  the  rhyth 
mic  swing  of  his  shoulders,  the  seeming  frenzy  of  his 
attack  upon  the  problem  of  sheer  multiplication,  filled 
me  with  dismay.  I  felt  for  that  instant  of  apprehending 
Troke  that  presently  I  should  be  gathered  into  a  fright 
ful  maw  and  obliged  to  scuttle  down  the  throat  of  the 
monster  to  avoid  being  crunched  by  the  teeth.  I  learned 
afterward,  of  course,  that  these  journeymen  were  piece 
workers,  and  that  Troke,  for  example,  was  one  of  three 
men,  each  of  whom  did  two  men's  work  on  one  machine 
and  was  paid  proportionately.  I  was,  indeed,  incited  to 
some  reverence  for  Troke  when  I  discovered  that  he 
earned  close  to  sixty-five  dollars — sometimes  beyond 
that — in  a  week. 

I  was  not  to  be  a  piece-worker.  Drynd,  who  had 
emerged  from  a  boy's  job  at  fifteen  dollars  to  button- 
machine  work  and  other  tasks  not  implying  journey- 
manship,  had  been  receiving  eighteen  dollars  in  his 
pay  -  envelop.  Heiser  gave  me  to  understand  that 
I  would  receive  fifteen  dollars  for  my  first  week. 


THE  BURDEN  309 

It  was  plain  that  the  urgency  of  the  work  led  him  to 
hope  that  I  would  be  able  to  do  labor  commanding 
more  money  as  soon  as  possible.  I  could  see  a  certain 
curiosity  shining  through  all  that  he  said  to  me,  though 
he  never  wasted  a  syllable  during  that  interval  in  which 
he  was  reasonably  impatient  to  be  sure  that  in  losing 
one  man  he  had  not  failed  to  find  another. 

The  first  day  was  a  day  of  furtive  looks.  Even  the 
cyclonic  Axel  Troke,  without  missing  a  beat  in  his  start 
ling  rhythm,  could  fling  a  flashing  interrogation  from 
under  his  savage  brows.  The  lame  man  at  the  two-needle 
machine  sent  me  looks  that  seemed  to  be  reminiscent 
of  that  parting  with  Drynd.  I  was  coincident  and  of 
some  obscure  interest  on  that  account. 

A  red-haired  man  with  an  extraordinary  Adam's 
apple,  who  always  has  cotton  in  one  of  his  ears,  and 
who  has  a  way  of  stretching  his  mouth,  as  in  an  absurd 
sort  of  grin,  when  he  reaches  a  certain  point  in  turning 
a  line  of  stitching,  looked  at  me  on  several  occasions  as 
if  I  were  quite  incredible.  His  name  is  Browsel.  He 
surprised  me  on  the  second  day  by  asking  me,  without 
preface  or  explanation,  if  I  played  pinochle.  There  were 
signs  of  his  being  disconcerted  by  the  discovery  that  I 
did  not  play  pinochle.  I  have  since  learned  from  him 
that  he  once  knew  a  man  who  was — that  is — who  had 
(he  was  trying  to  imply  "hunchback"  without  saying  so) 
— and  this  man  was  an  absolutely  astounding  pinochle 
player.  There  never  was  in  the  world  a  man  who 
could  play  pinochle  like  him.  His  genius  was  so  utterly 
unprecedented,  seemingly,  that  Browsel  had  developed 
a  theory — in  fact,  some  one  had  given  him  specific  sup 
port  for  the  theory — that  men  who  were  like  that  just 
had  to  be  wonderful  at  pinochle.  I  suggested  that  dur 
ing  some  noon  hour  he  might  teach  me  the  game.  The 
suggestion  was  received  thoughtfully.  When  it  had 
germinated  I  could  see  that  Browsel  was  considering 
the  interesting  possibilities  of  such  an  experiment,  was 

21 


310  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

estimating  the  chance  that  his  theory  might  be  con 
firmed  under  his  own  eyes  and  by  his  own  connivance. 

The  girl  who  had  patted  Drynd  on  the  cheek,  Dolores 
Oronato,  with  the  inky  Italian  eyes  and  the  heap  of 
shiny  hair,  had  at  first  a  pitying  look.  In  fact,  this  ex 
pression  lasted  for  several  days.  When  she  had  spoken 
to  me — it  was  only  to  say,  "The  foreman  wants  you" 
— the  look  began  to  change  and  at  last  became  very 
friendly.  In  a  week  she  was  calling  me  "Grayly." 

It  was  different  with  Rosa  Crooch,  a  flabby  girl  with 
faded  brown  hair  and  a  birthmark  on  her  left  temple, 
who  works  with  rounded  shoulders  but  with  her  face 
lifted,  as  if  mentally  detached  from  the  thing  she  is 
doing.  Rosa  Crooch  ignored  me  and  continued  to  do 
so.  The  wiry  young  woman  at  the  next  table,  Sina 
Rogovitsch  of  the  sharp  tongue,  told  me  the  other  day 
that  Rosa  regarded  me  as  bad  luck.  She  mentioned 
this  as  substantiating  her  contention  that  Rosa  was  a 
fool. 

Drynd's  friend  Lorkey  betrayed  a  proprietary  inter 
est  in  me.  He  went  about  the  business  of  exhibiting 
the  topography  of  the  job  with  the  look  of  a  person  who 
knows  a  secret.  He  indicated  where  I  might  hang  my 
hat  and  coat,  and  suggested,  wisely,  in  view  of  the  heat, 
that  I  would  wish  to  get  rid  of  my  collar. 

On  that  day  there  appeared  to  be  particular  activity 
in  bundling.  Twenty-five  coats  were  roped  in  each 
bundle.  Lorkey  had  vague  notions  of  the  central  con 
tracting  place,  in  New  York  somewhere,  to  which  these 
bundles  would  be  going. 

"The  manager's  all  right,"  remarked  Lorkey,  in  the 
midst  of  our  work  with  the  bundles.  "The  foreman 
ain't  so  easy." 

"Who  is  the  foreman?" 

Lorkey  indicated  a  man  standing  beside  a  cutting- 
table  at  the  far  end  of  the  larger  workroom;  a  round, 
florid  man  in  a  striped  shirt  and  wrinkled  linen  trousers. 


THE  BURDEN  311 

"He  was  down -stairs  when  you  came.  I  heard 
Reiser  telling  him  about  you.  He's  sizing  you  up, 
all  right." 

Soon  after  this  the  foreman  came  down  the  room 
with  an  odd  waddling  movement.  Bruler  disappointed 
me.  I  expected  him  to  be  gruff  and  peremptory.  I  had 
my  own  ideas  of  a  foreman.  Instead  he  has  a  high,  thin 
voice,  a  peculiar  inflection,  and  a  fretted,  indirect  man 
ner,  accentuated  by  a  way  of  turning  his  profile  when 
he  makes  a  remark  or  issues  an  order.  His  profile  is 
comic,  especially  when  he  is  chewing  gum. 

Lorkey  seemed  to  feel  obligated,  or  at  least  strongly 
disposed,  to  be  informative.  He  may  have  figured  that 
I  would  be  at  a  loss  without  some  knowledge  of  my  hu 
man  surroundings.  There  were,  indeed,  not  many  op 
portunities  for  talk,  excepting  noontime,  but  this  added 
a  certain  piquancy  to  fragments  of  Lorkeyan  philosophy. 
These  fragments  gained  a  distinctive  flavor  from  Lorkey's 
voice,  which  always  has  a  rusty  or  damaged  quality, 
like  the  exaggeration  of  a  bad  cold,  and  he  is  capable 
of  curious  transitions.  • 

For  example,  he  had  just  spoken  of  a  picnic-park  in 
the  Bronx — we  were  side  by  side,  sorting  coats  from  the 
pressers'  benches — when  it  occurred  to  him  to  remark: 

"The  Jews  make  the  most  money.  They  work  like 
hell." 

Upon  this  statement  of  cause  and  effect  he  did  not 
seem  to  expect  me  to  make  comment. 

I  indicated  Axel  Troke.     "Is  he  a  Jew?" 

"Nope.  I  don't  know  what  he  is.  A  Swede  or  a 
Burglarian  or  something.  But  Meinzer's  a  Jew.  He 
beats  Troke.  They  say  he  owns  three  houses." 

Lorkey's  glance  fell  for  a  moment  upon  the  group  of 
girl  workers. 

"I  don't  like  Jew  girls,"  he  said.  "They  got  the  best 
legs.  But  I  don't  like  'em." 

There  could  be  no  doubt  that  Lorkey  was  tremendously 


312  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

selective,  full  of  cheerful  prejudices  and  sharply  qualified 
appreciations. 

"Why  don't  you  like  Jew  girls?"  I  asked  him. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  They're  too  sassy.  They  paint 
too  much.  Did  y'ever  know  a  Russian  girl?  They're 
all  right." 

I  never  had  known  a  Russian  girl. 

"Sina's  Russian.  She's  too  damn  smart.  But  I 
know  fine  Russian  girls.  There's  one  works  in  an  ice 
cream  parlor  on  Second  Avenue.  An  Irish  girl's  nice 
sometimes.  I  know  'n  Irish  girl.  Her  father's  a  cop. 
She's  a  peach.  German  girls — ex-cuse  me.  Exceptin' 
one  I  used  t'  know  'n  Hobucken.  She  was  the  best 
dancer  'n  Hobucken.  Honest.  The  German's  is  goin' 
t'  git  licked,  all  right.  Don't  you  think  so?" 

Yes,  I  thought  so. 

"But,  say" — Lorkey's  head  drew  very  close — "don't 
talk  no  thin'  about  the  war  to  Bruler." 

The  deep  significance  of  Lorkey's  tone  made  com 
ment  or  inquiry  quite  unnecessary. 

I  was  thoroughly  tired  at  the  end  of  that  first  day, 
and  not  wholly  cleared  of  bewilderment.  It  was  sur 
prising  to  see  how  differently  most  of  the  men  looked 
when  they  were  dressed  for  leaving.  Browsel,  for  ex 
ample,  though  he  had  seemed  hopelessly  unkempt  (I 
wondered  if  his  name  made  me  think  of  "blowzy"),  not 
merely  by  reason  of  his  open  shirt  with  its  half -sleeves 
that  had  the  effect  of  threatening  nakedness,  but  by  a 
purely  individual  state  of  disorder  into  which  he  falls 
soon  after  reaching  his  machine,  emerged  upon  the  street 
in  a  Palm  Beach  suit,  with  a  tall  collar  that  rasped  his 
Adam's  apple,  a  speckled  scarlet  tie,  a  gorgeously  rib 
boned  Panama  hat,  scrupulously  polished  pumps  and 
a  cane  of  superior  distinction.  His  intensity  had  now 
disappeared.  After  lighting  a  tenuous  cigar  he  sauntered 
richly. 

The  women  and  girls  effected  an  even  more  startling 


THE  BURDEN  313 

transformation,  which  was  particularly  marked  in  the 
case  of  Sina  Rogovitsch.  Though  Lorkey's  invidious 
comments  as  to  artificial  coloration  had  seemed  especial 
ly  to  convict  the  Jewish  girls,  it  appeared  to  me  that 
Sina  was  most  profusely  ornamented  in  the  matter  of 
powder,  rouge,  and  lip  vermilion  when  she  stepped 
forth  on  very  high  white  heels,  swinging  a  beaded  hand 
bag,  editing  her  coiffure  with  a  subtle  finger,  and  be 
traying  entire  satisfaction  in  her  teeth  by  her  way  of 
smiling  with  fat  Mrs.  Jaskol,  of  the  basting- tables,  the 
invariable  companion  of  her  homeward  walks. 

It  was  on  the  afternoon  of  the  second  day  that  Bruler 
said :  "  Berg  will  show  you  the  button-machine.  Look 
out  for  your  fingers.  Take  it  slow." 

A  long  speech  for  Bruler. 

Berg  is  a  melancholy-looking  man,  long  in  face  and  in 
body.  His  eyes  prepared  me  to  hear  that  he  once  had 
been  some  one  in  particular.  He  is  quite  silent,  like  a 
beaten  dreamer.  He  was  silently  excited  in  giving  me 
that  first  lesson  at  the  button-machine.  I  fancied  that 
he  was  in  doubt  of  my  adjustment.  There  are  two 
treadles  under  the  machine.  One  lifts  the  little  steel 
fingers  that  take  hold  of  the  button  (with  its  eagle  and 
stars),  the  other  starts  the  needle  in  its  series  of  un 
canny  leaps.  It  was  an  immense  relief  to  Berg  to  see 
that  my  feet  found  these  treadles. 

"You  see,"  I  said,  "it's  my  back  that's  short." 

He  winced  without  a  word,  and  laid  the  shoulder  of  a 
marine  coat  so  that  the  strap  might  be  in  place  to  receive 
the  button. 

"You  press  it  down  here,"  he  said.  "Over  this  edge. 
That's  where  the  button  will  go.  ...  So. .  . .  Now  take  up 
your  foot — no,  your  left  foot  ...  so.  Now  push  down 
your  right  foot." 

The  needle  whirred.     "So!" 

The  button  was  in  place.  I  was  thrilled.  I  had  be 
held  the  ultimate  magic.  The  bit  of  bronze  relief 


314  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

against  the  gray-green  of  the  shoulder-strap  shone  for 
the  moment  like  a  supreme  triumph  of  art.  There  were 
many  boxes  of  buttons.  These  and  a  heap  of  coats  Berg 
instructed  me  in  placing  as  preliminary  to  my  slow  ex 
periments,  though  he  advocated  a  number  of  trials  with 
waste  pieces  of  cloth.  Berg  also  went  over  the  anatomy 
of  the  machine,  told  me  where  the  oil  must  be  supplied, 
where  the  trouble  usually  occurred  as  to  the  thread,  about 
the  belt  from  the  motor,  and  other  vulnerable  points. 
"There  is  always  something,"  he  added,  despairingly. 

He  mopped  his  long  face.  It  was  very  warm  in  this 
smaller  workroom.  The  winter  wool  seemed  to  make 
the  heat  more  ironical. 

I  had  several  mishaps  in  my  first  hour,  the  most 
humiliating  being  a  sadly  misplaced  button.  The 
calamity  looked  to  be  irretrievable.  But  Berg,  who  sat 
at  the  adjoining  machine,  explained  the  proper  method 
of  removing  the  button.  I  was  vastly  relieved.  On  the 
next  movement  of  the  starting-treadle  I  was  more  care 
ful  in  holding  my  coat  steadily. 

When  the  day  closed  I  ached  in  every  joint.  Yet  I 
was  quite  happy. 

"You  can  do  it,"  said  Berg,  briefly. 

By  the  end  of  the  third  day  I  had  learned  not  to  hold 
myself  so  tensely  and  was  much  less  weary.  It  was 
good  to  feel  the  energy  for  the  walk  home.  I  was  a  real 
workman. 

On  the  fourth  day  Rooks,  the  union  delegate  (who 
works  "in  the  cutting"),  told  me  that  I  had  better  be 
getting  my  card.  I  was  not  a  failure. 


XII 

Stitching  buttons  leaves  plenty  of  opportunity  for 
thought.  There  are  poignant  rebukes  to  absent-minded 
ness,  yet  the  margin  of  mental  liberty  is  wide.  I  sup 
pose  that  even  the  tempestuous  Axel  Troke  thinks  vari- 


THE  BURDEN  315 

ously  and  comfortably.    Having  co-ordinated  his  own 
mechanism,  a  man  may  make  astral  excursions. 

I  used  to  wonder  what  Berg  was  thinking.  Of  some 
thing  pathetic,  I  was  sure.  When  he  looked  across  the 
room  or  out  of  a  window  he  did  not  seem  to  be  scrutiniz 
ing  anything  in  particular.  He  was  looking  a  long  way 
.  .  .  into  the  past,  it  may  be;  or  toward  some  place  or 
person  far  removed  from  this  hot  cell  or  the  cavern 
with  its  fire-escapes. 

I  was  sure  that  much  thinking  swirled  in  the  head 
of  Rosa  Crooch.  With  her  face  up  so  much  of  the  time 
while  her  fingers  flew  in  the  basting,  Rosa  seemed  not 
only  thoughtful,  but  fiercely  intent,  as  if  she  were  work 
ing  out  a  problem  of  immense  intricacy. 

Doubtless  they  all  were  wishing.  .  .  .  These  would  be 
acutely  personal  wishes,  in  all  likelihood,  not  abstract 
desires.  Simple  things,  one  might  guess,  steps  rather 
than  flights  of  ascent  to  Something.  One  could 
not  fancy  the  probable  step  unless  he  knew  the  starting- 
point.  I  reminded  myself  that  they  all  had  the  same 
address. . . .  Somewhere  in  the  World  . . .  that  each  looked 
out  upon  the  universe  from  the  cell  of  Self,  wishing  in 
long  or  short  range,  here  as  elsewhere,  by  the  accident 
of  impinging  needs.  The  spectacle  of  a  group  of  types 
so  strongly  in  contrast  to  those  I  had  commonly  met 
filled  me  with  a  fresh  awe  of  the  mystery  of  desire,  a  new 
sense  of  the  tangled  filaments  connecting  individuals 
with  the  mass;  a  new  sense,  too,  as  trite,  I  have 
no  doubt,  as  reformers,  of  the  frightful  futility  of 
trying  to  mend  the  world  without  the  fundamental 
vision  of  All  of  Us. 

That  word  "Us"  sent  me  far.  "Us"  meant  a  new 
thing  to  me.  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  soldiers  who 
will  wear  these  coats  upon  which  I  have  been  fastening 
the  wing-spread  eagles  will  begin  thinking  in  terms  of 
"us" — an  "us"  new  to  them — and  asking  the  world 
some  exceedingly  awkward  questions.  These  ques- 


316  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

tions  will  be  as  awkward  as  if  they  had  not  been  asked 
over  and  over  again  since  man  began  to  talk.  Unfor 
tunately,  their  awkwardness  has  never  been  insur 
mountable.  History  is  largely  a  record  of  expedients 
for  fooling  the  askers  of  questions. 

On  a  Monday  morning  toward  the  end  of  September 
Lorkey  came  to  me  with  a  piece  of  startling  information. 
He  seemed  to  communicate  it  literally. 

"She  said,  'It's  a  wonder  Grayl  wouldn't  come  over 
sometime.' " 

Drynd  rather  than  Vicky  had  been  in  my  thoughts. 
Letters  had  come  from  the  Southern  camp  with  enthu 
siastic  accounts  of  his  work.  He  wished  that  the  camp 
were  nearer  New  York.  It  was  a  long  trip  for  a  man 
that  could  get  only  two  or  maybe  three  days.  Every 
body  said  they'd  be  going  over  soon.  Surely  that  would 
bring  him  to  New  York.  But  you  couldn't  tell.  Some 
times  they  didn't  sail  from  New  York.  They  had  to 
work  pretty  hard,  but  he  was  feeling  fine. 

The  truth  is  that  I  never  sat  down  to  the  machine 
without  thinking  of  Drynd.  It  had  been  his  machine. 
I  was  literally  taking  his  place,  doing  the  things  he  would 
have  been  doing,  and  a  picture  rose  up — it  had  a  kind 
of  quiver  in  the  hot  days — of  the  boy  in  dusty  khaki 
with  the  crossed  guns  on  his  collar,  and  that  eager 
laugh.  More  than  once  it  occurred  to  me  that  I  was 
helping  to  make  a  winter  coat  that  might  be  his.  When 
this  happened  I  lingered  over  the  choice  of  buttons, 
selecting  those  which  I  liked  to  fancy  were  particularly 
happy  in  their  mintage.  It  occurred  to  me,  also,  that  I 
might  some  day  be  put  to  a  peculiar  test;  that  he  might, 
in  the  fortunes  of  the  game,  come  to  a  crisis  in  which 
he  would  do  a  very  fine  thing,  something  outstanding 
that  would  be  remarked.  ..."  Corporal  Owen  Drynd,  a 
young  artilleryman  from  New  York,  performed  a  feat  of 
unique  daring"  .  .  .  and  that,  by  the  habit  of  following 


THE  BURDEN  317 

him  as  if  he  were  myself,  I  should  find  myself  pushing 
into  the  glorified  figure.  .  .  . 

A  thousand  fantastic  speculations  came  into  my  head, 
sometimes  out  of  my  gratified  hours,  sometimes  out  of 
a  gloom  that  would  throw  its  pall  over  me  with  strangely 
stupefying  results.  I  have  often  in  these  weeks  felt 
heavy  of  foot  and  dull  of  brain.  But  I  never  saw  Drynd 
save  as  the  shining  image. 

Vicky  Drynd's  remark  fell  unpleasantly.  I  passed 
off  Lorkey's  message.  Lorkey's  manner  of  delivering  it 
gave  no  sign  that  he  felt  himself  to  be  intrusted  with 
a  specific  suggestion,  or  that  he  knew  the  details  of  that 
scene  in  the  alley. 

"She  said  she  was  pretty  mean  to  yer,"  he  added  to 
the  first  statement.  "But  she  says  she  was  just  mad 
then.  She  isn't  now." 

No  such  assurance  could  be  any  lure.  I  was  through 
with  the  Vicky  person. 

Nevertheless,  when  Lorkey  returned  to  the  subject  last 
Monday  morning  I  felt  obliged  to  look  at  it  squarely. 

"  She  wants  t'  know  if  yer  won't  come  over.  She  wants 
t'  ask  yer  something." 

I  suppose  I  will  go,  because  I  am  afraid  of  her.  Be 
ing  through  with  disagreeable  things  isn't  always  by 
choice.  My  complacent  assumption  that  I  was  through 
with  her  begins  to  look  unbelievably  silly.  And  it  be 
gins  to  look  outrageous  and  humiliating  that  I  should 
be  tugged  at  like  a  puppy  on  a  string.  Yet  I  know  that 
I  must  go.  It  is  the  very  recollection  of  her  nasty  tongue 
and  contorted  face  that  makes  me  know  it.  It  appears 
that  she  suggested  to-morrow  night. 


XIII 

I  made  out  an  admirable  program  of  procedure  for  the 
visit.  The  formula  did  not  fit,  mostly,  I  suppose,  be 
cause  she  disconcerted  me  at  the  beginning  by  her  ap- 


318  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

pearance.  Quite  unaccountably  she  did  not  look  com 
mon.  She  is  pretty  in  rather  a  striking  way.  Even  in 
the  flaring  light  of  that  room  I  couldn't  deny  that  she 
was  exceptionally  attractive  in  every  physical  sign.  Her 
hair  has  a  lively  luster  that  I  haven't  often  seen  in  hair 
that  is  called  golden,  with  spirited  lines  in  its  way  of 
flowing.  Her  complexion  is  beautifully  clear.  There 
was  an  incredible  pulsing  softness  in  the  look  of  her  skin 
that  perplexed  me  when  I  tried  to  think  backward  to 
that  noisy  night  before  Drynd  went  away.  Everything 
that  I  had  thought  about  the  expression  of  her  eyes 
seemed  to  have  been  wrong.  I  had  been  in  no  doubt 
that  they  were  handsome  eyes,  but,  angry  and  sneering, 
they  did  not  hint  the  richly  fringed  effect  of  gentleness 
I  saw  in  them  as  she  stood  there  holding  open  the  door. 

She  wore  a  white  frock,  the  waist  of  which  had  folded 
lines  showing  a  deep  flash  of  her  body.  I  suppose  there 
is  a  point  at  which  such  revelations  become  undebatably 
immodest.  But  the  equation  always  brings  in  the  stag 
gering  complexity  of  the  fashion.  Modesty  makes  terms 
with  the  mode  as  well  as  with  elemental  inches.  As  an 
effect  the  frock  seemed  to  belong  to  her. 

"Glad  to  see  you,  Mr.  Grayl." 

Her  voice  had  changed  with  everything  else.  It  had 
dropped  or  overlaid  the  common  tone.  I  soon  dis 
covered  that  she  retained  the  Vicky  vernacular,  yet  the 
storm  must  have  accounted  for  much  of  the  vulgarity 
of  effect. 

"Sit  down,  won't  yer?  I  thought  yer  wouldn't  want 
to  come." 

"I  wasn't  quite  welcome  the  last  time,"  I  said. 

"Gee!  I  was  crazy  then.  Yes,  I  was.  Just  crazy. 
I  was  pretty  mean,  wasn't  I?" 

"You  spoke  pretty  plainly,"  I  said. 

"Lemme  have  yer  hat." 

She  seated  herself  at  the  end  of  the  red  sofa  nearest 
my  chair. 


THE  BURDEN  319 

"I  take  it  all  back.  You're  a  gentleman.  I'll  say 
that.  I  was  so  excited.  I  knew  well  enough  you  didn't 
make  him  go.  But  I  was  mad.  He  was  always  talkin' 
about  enlistin'.  It  was  awful  for  a  feller  t'  do  a  thing 
like  that.  There's  plenty  of  single  men.  That's  what 
I  kept  sayin'  to  'im.  'Let  the  single  men  go,'  I  said. 
'You  have  a  wife  and  baby.'  And  then  he'd  pull  some 
wheeze  about  goin'  away  to  protect  his  wife  and  baby. 
He  heard  somebody  say  that.  And  now  he's  in  it.  He 
says  it's  all  right.  But  he'll  be  sore  before  he  gets 
through.  He  ain't  no  feller  for  rough-house,  anyway. 
He  ain't  so  strong.  His  family  ain't  strong." 

"He  says  he's  feeling  fine,"  I  suggested. 

"  Of  course.  He's  excited.  I  suppose  they  have  good 
times.  They  say  they  have  shows  and  everything  in 
the  camp.  They  soon  forget  about  their  wives,  I  sup 
pose.  What  did  he  think  about  his  wife?  Say,  I  don't 
see  how  yer  could  do  what  yer  did.  I  don't  get  it  yet. 
Where  do  you  come  in?  I  didn't  believe  you'd  send  the 
wages.  That's  a  fact.  I  didn't  believe  it.  I  thought 
there  was  something  phoney  in  it ...  that  maybe  you'd 
get  fresh.  Yer  ain't  that  kind,  are  yer?  Y'  know  a  friend 
of  mine  said  maybe  you  was  a  spy.  Ain't  that 
the  limit?  'A  spy?'  I  says.  'What  d'yer  mean  spy? 
What  would  he  be  spyin'  on?  I  ain't  seen  'im.'  'Oh, 
you  wouldn't  see  'im  if  he  was  spyin','  she  said.  Can 
you  beat  that?  'No,'  I  said,  'I  think  he's  rich  or  some 
thing.  If  he  ain't  rich  how  c'n  he  work  for  nothin'? 
It  ain't  sensible.'  Yer  know  what  I  mean." 

"I  suppose  it  does  look  funny,"  I  said.  A  snapshot 
of  me  at  that  moment  would,  I  am  sure,  have  revealed 
a  particularly  vacuous  smile.  I  was  absurdly  uncom 
fortable. 

*'M'  friend  said,  'Well,'  she  says,  'there's  a  game  in  it 
somewheres.'  'You're  a  fool,'  I  says.  'He's  a  patriot.9 
Ain't  that  it?" 

Surely  the  word  never  had  a  queerer  setting.     I  won- 


320  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

dered  what  the  friend  thought  of  it.  Vicky  didn't  wait 
for  an  expression  of  my  feeling. 

"You're  all  right.     You  been  straight." 

She  put  a  hand  over  mine  where  it  rested  on  the  arm 
of  the  chair. 

"  I  didn't  know  you  was  so  nice  or  I'd  never  said  what 
I  did." 

The  tingling  warmth  from  her  hand  and  a  glow  of 
friendliness  in  her  eyes  made  my  position  quite  abject. 

"Let  us  not  think  any  more  of  what  happened,"  I 
stammered. 

She  put  a  final  pressure  in  the  touch  of  her  hand. 

"I  knew  you'd  be  all  right,"  said  Vicky.  "I  knew  if 
I  was  in  trouble  you  wouldn't  forget  me." 

"Are  you  in  trouble?"  I  asked. 

"  Not  exactly  in  trouble,"  she  went  on.  "  Yer  wouldn't 
call  it  trouble.  But  I  got  t'  move.  It  ain't  a  decent 
place.  Up  an  alley.  There's  a  nice  little  flat  I  c'n  get 
— two  awful  nice  rooms — for  eighteen  dollars.  But  I 
got  a  little  behind  and  I  thought  maybe  .  .  .  Yer  see  I 
got  terrible  behind  without  a  decent  thing  to  wear  .  .  . 
an'  the  baby  needed  some  things  .  .  .  an'  I  thought  may 
be — I'm  not  say  in'  yer  really  are  rich,  but  I  thought 
maybe  you  would  let  me  have  a  week  ahead  so's  I  can 
move."  She  hurried  on.  "Yer  know  it's  awful  hard  to 
get  any  movin'  done.  What  d'yer  think  them  flat- 
slingers  want  to  take  this  little  bunch  of  stuff  over  to 
Second  Avenue? — eight  dollars.  C'n  yer  beat  that?" 

When  I  told  her  I  should  be  very  glad  to  ad 
vance  the  week's  money,  and  to  keep  the  payments 
advanced  (this  seemed  to  be  implied),  she  caught  my 
hand  ardently. 

"You're  a  good  sport!  That  '11  just  help  me  out  fine. 
Say,  d'you  know  your  face  makes  me  think  of  Trace 
Torrence  in  the  movies.  Honest.  Just  like  his  brother. 
Do  you  know  him?  He's  some  lover,  all  right." 

I  was  sorry  not  to  know  about  Torrence. 


THE  BURDEN  321 

"Will  yer  have  a  glass  of  beer — I  got  a  bottle  in  the 
ice-box." 

"Thank  you  ..."  I  began. 

"Maybe  you'd  rather  have  a  highball.  Is  that  it? 
I  got .  .  ." 

"Not  to-night,  thank  you." 

"Oh,  you  ain't  a  bit  sociable!  But  that's  only  your 
little  old  way,  ain't  it?  Listen,  I  understand  you  better 
all  the  time.  Ain't  that  funny?  My  friend  says  I  c'n 
just  read  people.  I  guess  that's  so.  What  do  they  call 
that  when  yer  c'n  read  people?  Anyway,  she  said  it." 

I  managed  to  get  on  my  feet.  "I  fancy  most  women 
are  good  at  that,"  I  said. 

"Mr.  Smarty!  I  bet  you  ain't  so  quiet  when  yer  get 
started!" 

I  promised  to  send  the  money  over  by  Lorkey.  Unfor 
tunately  for  my  reputation  as  a  rich  man,  I  had  but  five 
dollars  in  my  pocket. 

It  occurred  to  me  that  it  would  be  just  as  well  not  to 
describe  this  incident  to  my  aunt;  at  least  not  in  detail. 
She  certainly  would  feel  obliged  to  warn  me  against 
Vicky  Drynd,  and  this  was  quite  unnecessary.  Yet  I 
compromised  by  telling  her  that  Vicky  had  asked  me 
to  call  and  that  she  had  apologized  for  her  earlier  be 
havior. 

"There  is  something  romantic  about  it,"  said  my 
aunt,  with  an  emphasized  casualness,  I  thought,  yet 
without  traceable  cynicism. 

She  had  the  evening  paper  in  her  hand. 

"And,  speaking  of  romance,  we  have  one  on  the  block. 
Listen  to  this.  *  Blind  Heiress  Weds  Guardian'  .  .  ." 

I  heard  her  voice,  though  I  rather  missed  the  details. 
Felicia  had  had  a  quiet  wedding,  but  not  too  quiet  for 
print,  since  the  distinction  of  some  of  the  few  guests, 
notably  of  her  guardian's  brother,  who  is  a  Senator,  and 
of  her  late  father's  cousin,  who  is  an  ex-Ambassador, 


322  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

was  quite  to  be  remarked.  Her  name  was  Abigail  Hidge. 
It  is  now  Mrs.  Simeon  Trogett. 

Nevertheless,  Abigail,  you  smiled  at  me.  You 
thought  your  smile  was  for  the  sunlight  in  the  Square, 
but  I  intercepted  it.  It  was  my  smile.  I  took  it,  and 
I  shall  keep  it.  And  that  was  my  look,  though  it  did 
not  see — your  eyes  and  my  sight.  That  picture  of  you 
— of  your  eyes  that  sent  out  so  much  of  you,  though 
they  Drought  nothing  back;  of  those  wonderful,  sensitive 
lips  that  have  no  infirmity,  that  may  speak  and  be 
kissed  and  express  that  ultimate  beauty  of  color  never 
to  be  belittled  by  all  the  smeared  counterfeits  of  a  stupid 
world — that  picture  belongs  to  me.  Even  old  Simeon 
can't  take  that  away. 

I  hope  you  will  be  happy,  Abigail.  You  have  the 
capacity  for  happiness.  You  have  proved  that,  for 
you  could  smile  into  the  dark.  Simeon  may  be  a  good 
sort.  At  all  events,  his  looks  will  never  trouble  you. 
I  hope  he  will  know  enough  just  to  let  you  be  happy,  to 
let  you  find  in  your  own  way  the  piercingly  white  end  of 
your  dream  vista;  that  if  some  great  desire  which  does 
not,  which  would  not,  I  am  sure,  fret  you,  but  only  fills 
you  with  its  ineffable  light — a  light  which  you  can  feel, 
and  which  you,  in  the  dark,  can  know  as  an  emanating 
glory — calls  and  calls  to  you,  that  you  may  find  in  that 
desire  a  question  carrying  its  own  joy,  a  question  which, 
like  that  of  the  eager  flower,  reaching  into  the  encom 
passing  blue,  answers  itself. 


PART   SEVEN 
Victory 


D\Y  after  day  I  have  the  window,  and  the  sullen 
gap  among  the  buildings,  and  the  smell  of  the 
clothes  and  of  the  machines.     Day  after  day  I 
have  the  hurrying  whir  of  the  needles,  a  thick,  enveloping 
murmur  splashed  by  the  chatter  of  my  own  steel  seam 
stress  as  she  nervously  answers  the  prod  of  my  feet. 
Day  after  day  I  see  the  same  figures  in  the  same  atti 
tudes,  making  the  same  gestures  as  they  swish  the  cloth 
or  shake  out  the  kinks  in  their  own  bodies. 

(There  is  a  man  named  Mortensen  who  several  times 
each  day  tosses  his  hairy  arms  aloft  with  fists  clenched 
in  a  fiercely  tense  stretching  motion.  His  face  stretches 
in  harmony  with  the  paroxysmal  crisis.  I  am  quite 
aware  that  his  purpose  is  peaceful,  and  that  the  effect 
to  him  is  entirely  agreeable,  perhaps  even  delicious. 
Yet  I  cannot  see  him  do  this  thing  without  ascribing  to 
the  savage  gesture  a  sort  of  allegorical  significance.  It 
is  as  if  he  were  saying:  "I  am  mute  and  patient,  but  by 
the  living  God!  some  day,  in  some  ripe  hour,  you  who 
inflict  upon  me  these  horrors  of  slavish  labor  shall  see 
a  stroke  of  prodigious  vengeance!"  Yet  Mortensen  is 
an  extraordinarily  gentle  soul.  He  has  told  me,  with 
gravity  and  tenderness,  of  his  goldfish  at  home.  He  in 
sists  that  nobody  understands  goldfish.) 

Beautiful  things  have  been  written  about  the  human 
imagination,  about  its  faculty  for  projection,  its  dazzling 
ingenuity  in  occupying  objective  situations.  Doubtless 
it  has  much  of  the  agility  that  has  been  pictured.  Sym- 


324  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

pathy  itself  may  go  a  long  way  with  the  lantern  of 
imagination.  But  I  am  freshly  assured  that  only  actual 
experience  can  give  a  true  sense  of  such  a  matter  a  sus 
tained  manual  labor.  I  thought  I  had  the  sympathy. 
Perhaps  I  had.  I  am  not  sure  that  in  sheer  sympathy  I 
have  so  greatly  changed.  The  vital  point  is  that  one 
has  to  stand  on  a  spot  to  know  how  the  world  looks 
from  that  spot.  And  in  this  matter  of  day  after  day 
labor  one  has  to  accomplish  contact  to  understand.  The 
Concord  philosopher  said,  speaking  of  solitude  and  so 
ciety,  "Keep  your  head  in  one,  your  hands  in  the  other." 
The  head  may  acquire  sympathy.  Only  the  hands  can 
complete  the  current  of  understanding. 

The  outlook — that  is  the  impressive  matter;  the  way 
a  changed  physical  outlook  shifts  the  perspective  beyond 
any  degree  figured  by  theory.  The  fact  that  I  can  write 
this  as  if  it  never  had  been  written  before  or  experienced 
before  illustrates  precisely  the  great  fact  against  which 
I  have  been  jostled  in  the  rush.  If  experience  really 
could  be  transmitted,  if  men  could  understand  without 
contact,  I  suppose  there  would  be  no  very  serious  labor 
troubles;  at  least  not  those  which  grow  out  of  a  lack  of 
understanding.  There  would  remain  those  that  would 
grow  out  of  the  debate  as  to  who  must  labor  and  what 
portion  they  should  receive.  This  remainder  ought  to 
be  sufficient. 

I  do  not  deceive  myself  as  to  one  point:  Labor  is 
scarce  and  growing  scarcer.  Even  a  very  human  sort 
of  shop  like  this  would  be  different  in  ordinary  times. 
In  ordinary  times  perhaps  Bruler  would  be  not  merely 
peevish.  With  the  normal  pressure  for  work  I  should 
not  be  getting  eighteen  dollars  a  week.  As  some  of  the 
cocky  economists  would  tell  me,  any  man's  offer  to  work 
for  less  would  cut  the  price  down;  unless  Sallison  were 
benevolent — or  unless  the  mass's  will  provided  against 
this  result  of  pressure.  The  union  is  but  a  primitive 
effort,  mighty  as  it  sometimes  is,  to  barricade  the  worker. 


VICTORY  325 

It  was  old  Jakow  who  said  the  other  day — sitting  like 
a  gnome  on  the  street  steps  at  noontime — "The  world's 
going  a  lot  farther  than  the  union  before  it  gets  through." 

"Sure,"  said  Mortensen,  with  a  hairy  gesture.  "So 
viets." 

"I  don't  know  about  Soviets.  But  the  world's  going^ 
a  lot  farther.  It  ain't  going  to  be  as  it  is.  Somethin's 
got  to  be  done." 

"The  producers  is  goin'  to  have  their  turn,"  said 
Mortensen. 

Jakow  astonished  me  by  his  challenge  to  this. 
"What  d'yer  mean  by  'producers'?  That's  a  foolish 
word,  generally.  'Producers.'  There's  different  kinds 
of  producin'." 

"I  don't  see  it's  foolish,"  persisted  Mortensen. 

"What's  foolish  about  it?"  demanded  Axel  Troke, 
taking  his  pipe  from  between  his  brown  teeth. 

"It  don't  do  no  good,"  declared  Jakow,  "to  make  out 
that  men  do  all  the  producin'  with  their  hands.  That 
ain't  goin'  to  mend  nothin'.  Not  as  I  see." 

"Are  the  damned  capitalists  producers?"  snapped 
Axel  Troke. 

"Maybe  some  of  them  ain't,"  admitted  Jakow. 
"Exceptin'  maybe  producin'  a  chance  to  git  work." 

"Hell!"  growled  Axel  Troke.  "A  chance  to  bleed 
the  men  that  do  the  producin'.  Exploiters.  You  talk 
like  a  fool." 

Jakow  shook  his  head.  "We  ain't  goin'  to  git  things 
changed  that  way.  Say" — he  swung  about  toward  Axel 
Troke,  and  an  extraordinary  animation  came  into  his 
face — "did  Karl  Marx  stop  producin9  when  he  began 
writin'?  Did  that  man  Lincoln  stop  worlcin9  when  he 
stopped  splittin'  rails?  Didn't  Christ  produce  nothin' 
after  he  stopped  bein'  a  carpenter?" 

It  was  as  if  Jakow  had  made  a  long  speech. 

Axel  Troke  laughed  hoarsely.  "Jakow,  you  ought  to 
git  on  a  soap-box." 

22 


326  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"An*  what's  all  that  got  to  do  with  the  workers'  revo 
lution?"  queried  Mortensen,  in  his  mild  voice.  "I  don't 
see  it  at  all " 

I  have  heard  fragments  of  various  vehement  discus 
sions.  Many  of  them  amazed  me.  Only  once  have  I 
been  drawn  in,  and  then  without  satisfaction.  There 
had  been  talk  about  British  and  American  labor  and  the 
more  prophetic  stand  of  the  British.  This  brought  up 
again  the  question  of  unions  and  their  effectiveness. 

"Unions,  they've  done  their  work,"  said  Jakow. 
"We  got  to  do  better." 

"How  better?"  demanded  Axel  Troke.  "They  ain't 
gone  half  far  enough.  Why,  the  capitalists  's  got  them 
all  by  the  nose." 

An  Italian  named  Vivirato,  with  heavy,  nervous  eye 
brows,  tilted  his  cigarette  and  slapped  his  biceps  with 
his  palms.  "The  unions  ain't  got  no  fight  in  'em  any 
more.  War  money  is  puttin'  'em  t'  sleep." 

"What  d'  you  think?"  asked  Jakow,  turning  to  me. 

"I'm  very  ignorant  about  it,"  I  said.  "Of  course, 
I  believe  in  unions.  I'm  mighty  glad  to  have  a  card. 
My  only  notion  has  been  that  the  best  thing,  maybe, 
would  be  a  union  of  all  of  us — of  all  the  people." 

"But  what  does  that  mean?"  burst  out  Axel  Troke. 

"Soviets,"  said  Mortensen. 

"Just  words,"  said  Vivirato. 

"I  know  what  he  means,"  interposed  Jakow. 

Axel  Troke  suspended  his  pipe  again.  "For  God's 
sake,  tell  us." 

"He  means—" 

"Perhaps  I  can  explain  it  myself,"  I  said.  "I  mean 
that  the  different  unions,  all  struggling  to  get  fair  play 
for  the  worker,  really  are  not  able  to  go  so  far,  to  get  as 
good  a  kind  of  fair  play  for  themselves,  as  might  be 
got  out  of  a  union  of  all  the  people.  For  instance,  be 
fore  there  was  a  union  Vivirato  would  be  pushing  the 
cutting-machine  through  a  hundred  and  twenty-five 


VICTORY  327 

layers  of  suit  cloth.  Now  the  union  rule  holds  him  to 
thirty-five.  But  there  are  thousands  of  other  things  that 
mean  a  lot  to  working-people,  people  not  in  unions — " 

"But  they  all  ought  to  be  in  unions,"  Mortensen 
contended. 

"I  think  that  somehow  they  should  all  be  brought 
into  one  big  union  of  all  the  people." 

"You  mean  Socialism,"  observed  Browsel,  who  had 
just  joined  the  noontime  group. 

"The  Syndicalists  they  got  a  better  idea,"  said 
Vivirato. 

"They  all  got  too  many  ideas,"  asserted  Jakow. 
"That's  why  they  don't  get  nowhere." 

"We  don't  want  'all  the  people'  to  have  the  say," 
Vivirato  persisted.  "We  want  the  people  that  does  the 
work  to  have  the  say.  D'yer  get  that,  son?  The  people 
that  does  the  work." 

"What  work?"  asked  Jakow,  dryly. 

There  could  be  no  end  to  such  discussions.  Some 
times  they  had  a  comical  violence,  particularly  when 
the  debate  raged  round  about  some  triviality  that  was 
quite  obliterated  in  the  scuffle.  At  other  times  the 
talk  took  an  impressive  emotional  turn  in  which  the 
lurking  skepticism  lost  its  zest.  I  often  found  myself 
quelled  by  evidences  of  peculiarly  intense  thinking  on 
vital  lines,  on  all  matters  close  to  the  bones  of  life,  and 
by  an  unmitigated  way  of  bringing  the  thoughts  out. 

For  example,  the  wide-shouldered  Russian,  Novikoff, 
speaking  from  a  pause  in  a  jerky  squabble  over  the 
word  "democracy,"  remarked  in  a  big  voice,  "In  my 
country  we  got  a  writing  man,  Chekhof — you  don't 
know  about  him — " 

"What  d'yer  mean,  'my  country'?"  Browsel  de 
manded.  "Ain't  this  your  country?  You  been  here 
twelve  years?" 

"Well,"  returned  Novikoff,  "a  man  has  a  mother, 
and  he  has  a  wife,  too." 


328  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Ha!"  Browsel  exploded,  understandingly,  "you 
married  the  United  States!  Novikoff,  you  got  funny 
ideas." 

"This  man  Chekhof,"  continued  Novikoff,  "he  was  a 
doctor,  they  say.  I  don't  know.  He  is  dead  now. 
But  he  wrote  stories.  Not  trash  stories,  you  under 
stand.  I  read  one  o'  them  stories.  I  don't  know  how 
you  would  say  the  name  of  the  story  in  American.  But 
it  was  about  a  man,  a  magister,  who  saw  a  black  ghost — " 

Vivirato  giggled.     "How  could  it  be  a  black  ghost?" 

"The  ghost  was  black,"  insisted  Novikoff.  "This 
man,  the  magister,  who  saw  the  black  ghost,  was  maybe 
a  little  crazy.  I  don't  know.  But  he  saw  the  ghost 
and  talked  to  him.  It  was  very  sad.  And  I  asked  my 
priest  about  it.  And  he  said  to  me  (he  was  a  fine  old 
man),  'Fidor,  that  story  means  that  you  should  believe 
in  yourself.'  If  I  could  tell  you  the  story  you  would 
understand  what  he  meant.  That's  what  he  said. 
*  You  should  believe  in  yourself.  And  the  Church  should 
believe  in  itself.  And  the  workers  should  believe  in 
themselves.'  I  remembered  that  part.  'The  workers 
should  believe  in  themselves.' " 

"What  did  th'  old  man  mean?"  asked  Axel  Troke. 
"I  never  could  git  hold  o'  preachers." 

"He  wasn't  preachin',"  declared  Novikoff.  "He  just 
said  it  to  me." 

"I  can't  see  it  means  anything,"  insisted  Axel  Troke. 

"Anyhow,"  Novikoff  went  on,  "I  think  it  means  that 
we  ought  to  know  what  we're  believin'.  And  do  we? 
They  yell  about  'democracy.'  What's  it  mean?  Tell 
me  that.  They  say  France's  democracy,  and  America's 
democracy,  and  England's  democracy.  How  do  they 
make  that?  Ain't  they  all  different?" 

"They're  all  alike,"  said  Axel  Troke.     " All  capitalist." 

"Well,  then,  is  democracy  capitalist?" 

Jakow  aroused  himself.  "Surely  not.  What  I  say 
is,  it  don't  have  to  be.  It  ain't  the  names,  it's  the  peo- 


VICTORY  329 

pie.  Socialism,  Soviets,  Syndic — what  do  you  call  'em — 
they  don't  make  no  difference.  It's  the  people.  They 
got  t'  think." 

"A  hell  of  a  lot  of  good  thinkin'  does,"  muttered  Axel 
Troke,  contemptuously.  "Thinkin'!  They  got  t'  get 
busy.  The  people  got  to  get  their  rights." 

It  was  here  that  Novikoff  delivered  himself  of  a  strange 
tirade  which  I  should  find  it  hard  to  write,  though  I  shall 
never  forget  the  burning  look  of  him  as  he  brought  down 
his  clenched  hands.  "Wrong!"  he  shouted.  "Think- 
in' — that's  just  what  they  got  to  do."  He  had  a  hot 
scorn  for  the  sheep  people  that  were  running  this  way 
and  that  at  the  heels  of  every  noise — quieted  now  be 
cause  there  was  a  war  and  bigger  pay  and  a  club  over 
them,  but  grumbling  and  grumbling  and  waiting  to  run 
somewhere  after  another  noise;  but  not  thinking  enough. 
Thinking  what  to  do.  Thinking  about  what  "rights" 
are.  Russia  was  thinking  as  well  as  starving.  Russia 
had  to  think.  It  was  time.  America,  it  would  have  to 
think.  It  would  have  to  think  about  this  democracy 
thing  it  said  it  believed  in;  whether  it  really  meant 
anything  at  all;  whether  people  who  believed  in  them 
selves  could  believe  in  democracy,  too.  The  people  who 
came  back  from  the  war,  in  France,  in  England,  in  Italy, 
in  America,  they  would  want  to  know  about  this  democ 
racy  and  what  it  was  going  to  do  now.  Do,  you  under 
stand,  not  talk  about. 

Axel  Troke  was  ready  with  a  caustic  rejoinder,  but  it 
was  a  quarter  to  one  and  we  went  back  to  work. 


Sarah,  though  greatly  absorbed  by  her  own  advent 
ures,  has  always  been  eager  to  hear  about  the  work 
shop.  She  has  seemed  to  think  that  it  was  best  to  be 
jocular,  to  pretend  to  wonder  when  I  was  going  to  be 
promoted,  and  so  on. 


I 


330  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"You  know,  Anson,  you  really  have  a  soul  above 
buttons." 

"  I'd  like  to  see  you  try  to  put  one  on,"  I  said. 

"The  idea!"  cried  Sarah.  "Think  of  a  motor-car 
expert—" 

"Well,"  I  said,  "if  anything  in  the  world  is  perfectly 
plain,  by  proof  that  is  furnished  a  thousand  times  a 
day,  it  is  that  a  very  low  order  of  intelligence  does  not 
preclude  a  capacity  for  running  a  car.  Moreover,  I 
have  been  doing  pockets.  To  parallel  that  you  would 
have  to  run  two  cars  at  once." 

"I'm  not  a  bit  sorry  for  you,"  said  Sarah.  "I  know 
you're  making  notes  for  a  great  essay  on  *  Pockets  and 
Patriotism'." 

"Good  idea,"  remarked  my  aunt.  "They're  pretty 
well  tied  just  now.  So  far  as  the  income  tax  is  con 
cerned,  I  suppose  you'll  escape.  But  how  would  you 
measure  your  wages?  Can  you  be  said  to  get  any?  It's 
a  funny  situation  for  a  conscientious  man — or  would  be 
if  there  was  money  enough  to  carry  you  to  the  figures." 

"It  may  be  original,"  remarked  Sarah,  gravely,  "but 
not  illogical.  It  shouldn't  be  called  funny.  A  man 
earns  wages.  A  wife  gets  the  money.  The  fact  that  it 
isn't  his  wife  is  a  mere  detail." 

"Right  for  you,  Sarah,"  I  said.  "You  state  it  like 
an  officer  and  a  gentleman." 

"Though  I  should  say,"  interjected  my  aunt,  "that 
the  tendency  to  regard  whose  wife  as  a  mere  detail  has 
been  known  to  be  perilous." 

"Now,  Aunt  Paul!"  protested  Sarah.  "Please  don't 
make  me  more  nervous.  Don't  you  suppose  I'm  remem 
bering  every  day — right  in  a  traffic  jam — how  absent- 
minded  Anson  is?  And — " 

"It  isn't  every  man,"  I  said,  "who  can  support  one 
woman  and  amuse  two  others,  and  sustain  the  effect." 

"There's  one  woman  you've  forgotten,"  Sarah  added, 
seriously.  "Mother  worries  about  you." 


VICTORY  331 

"Nonsense!" 

"But  she  does.  I'm  sure  she  thinks  it  would  be 
better  to  take  up  a  collection  for  the  Drynd  girl." 

"If  she  only  knew,"  I  said,  "she  has  much  greater 
occasion  to  worry  over  you — darting  about  with  hand 
some  military  chiefs,  night  and  day,  responsible  to  no 
exacting  domestic  guardian,  privileged  to  invent  ex 
planations  for  the  most  shameless  hours,  presenting  all 
the  time  an  appearance  that  constitutes  an  insidious 
temptation  to  our  precious  youth — " 

"Do  you  know,"  said  Sarah,  "I  was  within  a  street 
or  two  of  your  shop  yesterday  with  a  colonel  who  was 
being  measured  for  new  clothes — and  I  can  tell  you  it 
takes  a  lot  of  clothes  to  get  around  him.  He's  enor 
mous.  And  I  was  thinking,  suppose  I  dropped  you  at 
the  shop  some  morning,  or  picked  you  up  at  five-thirty, 
would  it  upset  discipline?" 

"We  work-people,"  I  said,  "refuse  to  be  patronized. 
That  is  precisely  what  you  cannot  do.  We'll  have 
cars  of  our  own  when  we're  quite  ready.  No,  it 
wouldn't  upset  discipline;  though  it  might  upset  their 
gravity,  if  they  happened  to  have  any  of  that  at  the 
moment." 

"Good  heavens!"  cried  Sarah.  "I  wonder  if  this 
means  that  you  haven't  told  any  of  your  work  friends 
about  me.  I  should  think — " 

"We  don't  discuss  our  women,"  I  said. 

Laura's  attitude  has  been  disconcerting.  When  I 
saw  her  for  the  first  time  after  she  had  heard  the  news 
from  Sarah  I  fancied  that  she  was  annoyed.  She  looked 
into  my  eyes  with  an  intentness  that  seemed  to  mean  a 
sort  of  anger.  I  attributed  this  to  the  irritation  of  a 
person  who  was  rebelliously  unsympathetic  toward  the 
cataclysm  of  war.  I  remember  saying  to  myself:  "This 
is  a  Pine  effect.  The  future  Mrs.  Lawrence  Pine  is  in 
censed  by  a  quixotish  escapade." 


332  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

The  fact  that  she  said  no  such  thing  did  not  remove 
my  suspicion. 

Afterward  she  wanted  to  know  about  the  work-people, 
women  and  men.  She  knows  all  about  unions.  It  was 
the  foreign  born  that  appeared  to  interest  her  particu 
larly.  She  caught  up  Novikoff.  I  can  see  that  anything 
skeptical  or  revolutionary  or  foreign  has  a  kind  of  exotic 
flavor  for  her.  Her  questions  made  me  feel  as  if  I  were 
a  poor  observer. 

"You  must  know,"  I  said,  "that  I'm  not  a  labor  in 
vestigator  or  anything  like  that.  I'm  not  slumming. 
I  just  have  a  plain  job  for  a  plain  purpose.  These  people 
are  not  freaks.  They're  not  submerged,  except  to  high 
brow  reformers.  Just  now  they're  working  specifically 
for  the  United  States.  They're  covering  the  nakedness 
of  an  army." 

"You're  horribly  quick  on  the  trigger,"  returned 
Laura.  "You  shouldn't  let  the  game  make  you  so 
irritable.  I  wonder  if  you're  tired." 

"Not  at  all,"  I  told  her.  "I  never  felt  better  in  my 
life.  I  have  honest  work.  I'm  not  sure  that  I  ever  had 
it  before.  When  I  think  of  the  drivel  I  used  to  teach 
it  gives  me  a  nausea." 

At  this  Laura  visibly  brightened. 

"You  must  admit  that  has  the  reformer  sound." 

"I  don't  care  what  sound  it  has.  It's  true.  The 
whole  mess  is  due  to  bad  schools,  or  not  enough  schools, 
as  in  Russia.  Sometimes  I  think  that  affirmatively  bad 
schools  do  more  harm  than  no  schools  at  all." 

"We  sha'n't  quarrel  about  that,"  said  Laura.  It  was 
as  if  she  expected  me  to  resent  her  agreeing  with  me.  I 
stopped  exploding.  It  is  a  pity  one  should  dissipate 
energy  in  explosions.  Moreover,  it  was  exasperating  to 
find  that  I  had  said  something  that  would  have  pleased 
Pine;  though  this  was  less  annoying  than  the  suspicion 
that  Laura  was  getting  ready  to  pity  me. 

At  that  moment  nothing  would  have  seemed  more 


VICTORY  333 

calamitous,  for  she  has  trimmed  sail  since  those  earlier 
days  when  she  was  Laura  Sherrick,  and  the  difference, 
whatever  it  is,  does  not  make  it  easier  to  accept  her  com 
passion.  Her  quizzical  way,  when  she  chose  that,  was 
much  more  tolerable.  An  impending  Pine  must  have  an 
influence.  She  is  going  through  spiritual  changes.  I 
suppose  this  has  been  inevitable.  She  was  in  a  state  of 
war.  I  wonder  if  she.  ever  will  make  peace.  After  all, 
it  is  dreadfully  difficult  to  think  of  Laura  as  married. 
To  be  sure,  I  have  much  the  same  feeling  about  Sarah, 
if  in  a  lesser  degree.  I  have  pictured  a  married  Sarah. 
But  not  often. 

(It  grows  increasingly  difficult  to  officiate  at  these 
mental  marryings.  I  remember  the  twinge  it  gave  me 
to  marry  Laura  to  Pine;  how  I  mentally  di  orced  them, 
and  no  harm  done.  Surely  there  is  a  deepening  com 
plexity  in  the  effort  to  fancy  the  modern  £irl  as  mar 
ried.  She  never  gives  even  the  meagerr^t  ^ft  to  any 
effort  toward  such  a  visualization.  There  iz  nothing  to 
go  on.  "The  blushing  bride!"  Where  have  the  blush 
ers  gone?  Shall  Doctor  Freud  or  any  of  his  multiplying 
disciples  tell  us?  That  they  have  stopped  blushing 
doesn't  need  to  mean  that  they  have  stopped  marrying, 
or  stopped  thinking  about  it,  either.  It  may  mean  only 
that  marrying  has  stopped  making  them  blush.  This 
may  be  flattering  either  to  marriage  or  to  the  brides. 
Only  profound  expertness  is  likely  to  know.  Meanwhile, 
how  is  a  person  to  fit  one  of  these  unblushing,  level- 
looking  girls  into  a  bridal  image?) 

Perhaps  jesting  is  the  safest  pursuit  for  a  man  on 
the  side-lines. 

There  was  a  night  when  the  three  of  us  went  to  a  mili 
tary  show  at  the  Garden;  and  another  when  Pine  com 
pleted  the  quartet  at  a  Red  Cross  concert  in  an  odd  little 
church.  Pine  looked  perplexed.  These  are  days  of 
perplexity  to  men  who  think  as  he  does.  When  I  re 
called  Drynd,  straight,  slim,  earnest,  tinglingly  eager  for 


334  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

the  vast  adventure,  Pine  filled  me  with  fury;  particu 
larly  when  I  saw  him  walking  beside  Sarah. 

This  was  on  the  way  home.  Laura  hi  this  pair- 
off  seemed  inclined  to  avoid  bickering.  She  wore  a  very 
sober  frock.  I  thought  she  was  a  trifle  pale,  and  this 
gave  her  eyes  a  certain  soft  brightness. 

She  told  me  of  a  letter  she  had  from  Rudley.  There 
must  have  been  a  thrill  in  it,  for  he  had  passed 
through  the  lively  ordeal  of  an  encounter  with  the 
German  "tango  fliers."  The  enemy  had  appeared  to 
leap  out  of  a  cloud.  Rudley  and  two  other  airmen 
were  outnumbered,  three  to  one.  Only  sheer  luck 
saved  them  in  their  plunge  to  safety — sheer  luck  and 
the  fact  that  on  this  occasion  the  boches  were  "rotten 
marksmen." 

The  letter  was  written  in  high  spirits,  Laura  said. 
She  would  show  it  to  me. 

I  was  able  to  give  her  a  bit  of  narrative  he  had  written 
concerning  an  enforced  landing  during  a  scouting  trip, 
brought  about  by  shortness  of  petrol;  and  how  in  a  little, 
flowery  French  village  they  had  never  heard  of,  and  in 
which  American  fliers  never  had  been  seen  before,  they 
were  feted  by  the  quaintest  imaginable  group  of  people, 
including  children  who  stared  and  cried  out  with  funny 
sounds,  and  one  or  two  astonishingly  pretty  girls  who 
embarrassed  them  with  flowers  they  couldn't  carry  in 
their  machines  and  had  secretively  to  drop  as  they 
started  their  engines. 

"I  see,"  said  Laura.  "He  mentioned  the  danger  to 
me  and  the  romance  to  you." 

It  was,  I  suggested,  awkward  to  be  sentimental  with 
one's  sister.  "And  it  may  be,"  I  said,  "that  he  distrusts 
your  sympathy  for  romance." 

"Do  you?"  she  asked  me. 

"I'm  not  an  expert,"  I  said.  "And  besides,  I  don't 
understand  you  at  all." 

"But  you  told  me  the  story." 


VICTORY  335 

"It  was  only  a  fair  swap.  I  hadn't  thought  of  it  as 
romance.*' 

"Then  perhaps  I  do  know  romance  when  I  see  it." 

"I  hope  so,"  I  said.  "That  ought  to  make  life  a  lot 
more  interesting." 

Here  she  amazed  me  by  remarking,  "I'll  never  be 
content  simply  to  watch  romance." 


in 

Last  Monday  afternoon  I  received  a  letter  from  Vicky 
Drynd — Sallison  himself  handed  to  me  the  puzzling 
envelop. 

It  had  been  a  damp,  coolish  day.  The  city  looked 
driven  and  preoccupied.  On  certain  days  streets  have 
a  way  of  turning  their  shoulders  to  you.  On  others 
they  seem  to  stare  without  reserve  and  without  sensi 
bility.  On  the  friendly  days  there  is  a  real  glow  of 
something  gracious  in  streets,  something  more  than  is 
brought  to  them  by  the  imagination.  That  master 
gilder,  the  sun,  has  much  to  do  with  the  effect,  I  have 
no  doubt.  Sunlight  in  New  York  has  an  unmitigated 
frankness,  a  slashing  style,  whether  it  is  blistering  the 
tar-smeared  traffic  spaces  in  summer  or  demonstrating 
spectra  in  the  water-pipe  icicles  of  winter.  There  is  a 
bar  of  it,  not  more  than  a  foot  wide,  that  slants  into 
my  cavern  beyond  the  window  every  afternoon.  In 
an  hour  it  has  slipped  away  after  proving  once  more 
that  a  certain  iron  shutter  is  not  far  from  dropping  off 
its  one  holding  hinge. 

This  Monday  was  marked  for  me  by  a  sense  of  unusual 
activity  in  the  shop.  Lorkey's  hair  had  an  angry  dis 
order  in  it.  Even  the  ordinary  procedure,  as  of  the 
tractor  affair  that  distributes  its  layers  of  lining  on  the 
long  shiny  cutting- table,  seemed  to  be  affected  by  an 
accelerating  pressure.  The  air  of  the  rooms  was  gloomy. 
The  faces  looked  closed. 


336  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

I  may  have  ascribed  some  of  these  effects  as  a  result 
of  a  Rosa  Crooch  incident.  Once  in  the  hot  days  Rosa 
fell  straight  backward  without  warning  to  her  mates, 
and  there  was  a  great  scurrying  for  water,  and  various 
strange  suggestions  as  to  the  best  way  to  revive  a  person 
who  has  fainted.  In  the  afternoon  of  Monday  a  com 
motion  of  so  marked  a  character  that  the  stoppage  of 
work  became  entirely  undebatable  sent  me  to  the  door 
of  the  "long  room,"  then  to  a  group  which  again  sur 
rounded  Rosa,  this  time  in  a  seizure  that  was  more 
baffling  than  any  swoon.  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  her  blue 
lips,  and  of  her  eyes,  fixed  and  protruding  in  a  cataleptic 
stare.  Vivirato  lifted  her  from  the  floor  to  one  of  the 
tables.  Sina,  whimpering,  slapped  one  of  the  girl's 
hands,  while  Mortensen  belabored  the  other  with  a  vio 
lence  that  threatened  to  produce  a  fracture.  Probably 
the  open  eyes  and  the  rights  of  the  work-table  checked 
Berg  with  the  fire-bucket.  I  saw  a  wet  handkerchief 
passing  over  the  convulsed  face.  Then  suddenly  Rosa 
sat  up,  sobbed,  scowled,  and  slid  to  her  feet.  She  pushed 
away  several  sympathetic  hands  and  insisted  upon  seat 
ing  herself  at  her  machine. 

It  was  when  I  was  turning  away  that  Sallison  handed 
me  the  letter.  It  said: 

DEAR  MR.  GRAYL, — You  will  be  surprised  to  get  this  letter 
but  I  would  like  very  much  if  I  could  see  you  You  proved 
yourself  a  good  friend  and  Im  a  good  friend  of  yours  too 
thats  saying  something  with  the  World  the  way  it  is  I  wish 
you  could  come  tomorrow  night  Will  you  please — 111  look 
for  you  sure  You  know  the  second  floor  right  they  always 
have  the  front  door  open.  VICKY  DRYND. 

She  must  have  mailed  this  in  the  morning.  It  was 
written  in  a  large,  loose  hand  on  blue  paper  with  a 
gorgeous  gilt  "D"  in  the  corner.  I  congratulated  my 
self  that  she  had  given  me  a  day's  margin  of  time. 
That  evening  did  not  bring  a  calling  mood. 


VICTORY  337 

By  the  time  Tuesday  evening  came,  after  a  day  with 
an  autumn  lift  in  it,  I  was  in  better  key  for  the  advent 
ure,  though  still  nervous  enough.  It  was  quite  clear 
in  my  mind  that  she  would  want  money,  so  that  I  made 
it  a  point  with  myself  that  I  could  not  be  disconcerted 
by  the  element  of  surprise.  There  was  a  satisfaction 
in  magnifying  this  sense  of  preparation.  And  I  told 
myself  that  I  must  not  assume  that  anything  she  sug 
gested  was  to  happen  precisely  as  she  arranged  it.  I 
must  have  some  sort  of  firmness.  If  it  was  man's  privi 
lege  to  supply  money  to  women,  it  was  his  privilege 
also  to  haggle  reasonably  as  to  the  amount.  Her  ludi 
crous  assumption  that  I  was  rich  should  meet  its  natural 
rebuff  ...  if  she  went  too  far.  I  was  not  sure  as  to  the 
measurement  of  too  far. 

(My  aunt  has  taken  a  positive  stand  upon  this  subject 
of  money.  "If  you  are  going  to  turn  over  your  earn 
ings  to  a  soldier's  wife,  I  sha'n't  accept  any  board  money 
from  you."  "My  dear  aunt,"  I  said,  "are  you  going  to 
call  that  pitiful  ten  dollars  a  week  anything  more  than 
conscience  money  in  return  for  your  splendid  hospi 
tality?"  "Not  a  cent,"  she  insisted.  "I  don't  know 
how  much  you  have,  but  it  won't  last  forever.  And  I 
don't  need  it.  I  won't  take  money  from  a  man  who  is 
clothing  soldiers.  When  the  war  is  over  .  .  ."  Nothing 
could  better  illustrate  the  sentimentality  behind  my 
aunt's  shrewdness.) 

As  I  knocked  on  Vicky  Drynd's  door  I  realized  how 
often  being  prepared  is  being  fooled.  I  was  as  bereft 
of  preparation  as  if  it  were  something  one  might  leave 
behind  him  under  a  chair. 

Vicky  swung  open  the  door  with  a  genuine  manner,  a 
manner  suggesting  close  study  of  the  higher  movies; 
and  I  must  confess  that  she  looked  stunning.  She  made 
so  charming  a  picture  that  if  I  could  be  said  to  have  had 
a  thought  it  was  that  she  certainly  hadn't  wished  to 
see  me  about  money.  The  error  in  this  deduction  prob- 


338  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

ably  has  occurred  many  times  before,  and  through  no 
fault  of  women.  I  should  have  had  a  theory  that  she 
would  have  chosen,  if  she  wanted  money,  to  produce  an 
individual  effect  of  destitution.  And  she  didn't  look  at 
all  destitute.  She  looked  like  a  bud,  an  unfolding  one, 
with  a  diaphanous  corolla.  She  wore  one  of  those  frocks 
that  neither  begin  nor  end  very  definitely.  It  wouldn't 
do  to  assume  that  it  was  cheap  because  there  was  very 
little  of  it.  In  fact,  I  have  understood  that  the  expen- 
siveness  of  frocks  is  in  a  ratio  inverse  to  their  volume. 
However  this  may  be,  Vicky's  dress  seemed  to  suggest 
an  artistic  intention.  It  became  possible  to  know  that 
she  has  beautiful  arms  and  a  roundness  of  body  that 
could  hardly  be  guessed  in  ordinary  clothes.  Her  skin 
is  extremely  clear,  with  a  kind  of  luminous  fairness. 
To  a  drunken  man,  or  a  man  very  much  in  love,  I'm 
sure  it  could  look  incandescent. 

She  had  the  little  fashionable  shrug  of  the  shoulder 
as  she  extended  her  hand — "full  of  tricks!"  I  said  to 
myself  in  a  bewildered  wonder  as  to  where  she  picked 
them  up.  I  could  see  the  tricks  without  being  in 
sensible  to  the  effectiveness  of  them.  I  knew  from  the 
first  moment  that  she  had  set  out  to  etherize  me.  I  could 
feel  the  stealing  subtlety  of  the  anesthetic.  I  suppose  it 
was  part  of  the  success  of  the  operation  that  I  had  no 
resentment.  I  was  convinced — I  am  still  convinced — 
that  she  has  remarkable  magnetism. 

"You  dear  old  sport!"  she  said  to  me.  "I  knew  you'd 
come!  I  said  to  myself,  'If  I  ask  Grayl  to  come  he'll 
come!'  And  I  was  righty  all  righty,  wasn't  I?  What 
is  that  when  you  know  a  person  will  do  something? 
Ain't  it  a  funny  thing?  I  got  that.  I  can  tell.  It  just 
comes  to  me.  I  said  to  a  friend  of  mine  I  knew  he 
wasn't  comin'  the  time  he  promised.  I  didn't  even  get 
dressed  for  where  we  was  going.  And  he  didn't  come. 
Say,  what  a  swell  hat  you  got!  Sit  over  here.  Ain't  it 
nice  and  cool  now?  I  hate  hot  weather.  Don't  you? 


VICTORY  339 

It's  tough  when  you're  poor.    If  you  was  rich  and  had 
an  automobile  ..." 

"How  is  the  baby?"  I  asked. 

"The  baby?  Oh,  mamma  has  him  now.  He  ain't 
been  very  good.  And  besides — well,  when  you  want  to 
do  something.  Don't  you  see,"  and  she  caught  one  of 
my  hands,  "I  don't  want  to  take  your  money  all  the 
time." 

"There  will  be  more  of  it,"  I  said.  "I  shall  be  getting 
into  piece-work.  You  shall  be  having  at  least  twenty- 
five  in  a  little  while." 

"The  idea!  How — how  can —  You  didn't  promise 
that." 

"If  Drynd  had  kept  on  he  would  be  earning  more." 

"You  darlin'!"  She  gave  my  hand  a  pressure  be 
tween  both  of  hers.  "You're  a  wonder.  But — listen! 
I  want  to  do  something.  I  always  wanted  to.  If  I 
hadn't  got  married  I  would  have  done  it  by  now.  Ain't 
a  girl  a  fool  to  marry?  Listen! — I  wanted  to  tell  you — 
honest,  I  thought  about  it  a  lot  before  I  wrote  to  you. 
How'd  I  know  you  wouldn't  think  it  was  just  a  touch — 
that  I  wasn't  putting  something  over  on  you — just  to 
blow  myself?  It  ain't  that  at  all.  I'm  awful  economical 
— honest  I  am.  I  got  a  friend  in  Stillingham's — in  the 
dress  department.  She  tips  me  to  good  things.  You'd 
be  surprised  to  know  what  I  got  this  dress  for — you 
would,  actu'ily.  It  was  a  shame  to  take  it.  Don't  you 
think  it's  a  wonder?" 

"It's  very  beautiful,"  I  said. 

"That's  nice  of  you.  You  understand  a  girl,  don't 
you?  You  know  just  what  I  mean  about  doin  some 
thing.  I  said  to  myself,  I  said,  'Mr.  Grayl  will  under 
stand  exactly.'  I  got  a  chance — that's  just  it.  I  got 
a  chance  to  do  something  I  want  to  do.  I  couldn't  do 
it,  either,  if  a  certain  man  hadn't  a  crush — if  he  didn't 
think  I  was  the  goods — and  if  he  hadn't  a  pull.  Listen! 
this  man  can  put  me  on  the  stage.  No  fake.  No  rotten 


840  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

shows,  either.  He  knows  the  big  people.  Sees  them 
every  day.  But  he  says  I  need  a  few  dancin*  lessons — 
just  a  few.  It's  a  cinch,  he  says,  to  make  me  right  in 
a  little  while.  A  cinch.  I  got  the  figure,  he  says.  Just 
a  few  steps — that's  all  I  need.  And  maybe  a  few  singin* 
lessons.  I  had  some  before  I  was  married.  I  can  sing, 
all  right.  Just  a  few  more  lessons.  Now,  if  I  could  win 
out  I  wouldn't  have  to  take  the  money  from  you." 

"I  wish  you  wouldn't  worry  about  that,"  I  said. 

"I  do,  though.  It  don't  seem  fair.  And  if  I  could 
win  out  I  wouldn't  have  to  take  it.  There's  good  money 
on  the  stage  if  you  get  in  right.  And  that's  what  I  got 
a  chance  for.  I  got  the  chance  if  I  can  get  these  lessons. 
And  this  man  says  he'll  guarantee  me  for  a  hundred  dol 
lars.  That  ain't  much,  is  it?" 

"I'm  sure  I  don't  know,"  I  said,  "what  such  things 
cost.  It  seems  very  little." 

"Why,  I  know  girls  has  spent  three  hundred  on  that 
game.  One  of  them's  gettin'  fifty  a  week.  Fifty  a  week ! 
That's  goin'  some.  And  there's  Mini — old  Steve 
McGuire's  girl — pullin'  out  two  hundred  a  week,  and 
a  friend  of  mine  told  me  she  only  spent  si::ty  dollars  for 
lessons.  C'n  you  beat  that?  That's  luck,  all  right. 
You  have  to  have  big  luck  to  do  a  thing  like  that. 
Honest,  a  hundred's  just  play  in'  a  sure  thing  when 
you're  guaranteed.  That's  what  he  says.  For  a  hun 
dred." 

She  rested  her  hands  on  my  shoulders  and  looked  at 
me  earnestly,  her  lips  parted. 

"Listen! — will  you  lend  me  a  hundred?  I'll  pay  you 
back — every  cent.  Honest  to  God.  And  then  I  won't 
have  to  take  any  more  money  from  yer." 

"Yes,"  I  answered,  feebly,  "if  it  will  help  you. 
Though  as  to  the  stage — " 

"You  dear!"  She  flung  her  arms  around  my  neck 
and  kissed  me  violently.  "I  knew  you  would!  I  just 
knew  it." 


VICTORY  341 

"But  I  ought  to  tell  you,"  I  said,  "that  I  think  the 
stage  is  a  very  uncertain  affair." 

She  sat  back,  her  hands  clasped  before  her,  with  no 
sign  of  having  indulged  in  an  unusual  demonstration  or 
of  recognizing  my  benumbed  situation. 

"What  do  you  mean,  uncertain?  You  mean  I  ain't 
got  a  chance?" 

"Not  exactly  that,"  I  said.     "I  mean—' 

"Oh,  I  know!  You  think  it's  wicked.  Ain't  that  it?" 
She  laughed,  throwing  her  head  back  and  showing  the 
remarkable  teeth  she  has.  "Oh,  say!  Don't  you  be 
lieve  all  you  hear,  bo.  Don't  you  believe  it.  I  ain't  no 
innocent  virgin.  I  know  how  to  take  care  of  m'self, 
all  right.  I'm  goin'  t'  win  out.  The  thing  is  to  get  on 
the  stage.  See?  They  got  t'  keep  the  mob  away,  of 
course.  They  got  to.  They  can't  take  every  boob  that 
comes  along.  This  man  says  it.  'Get  this,'  he  says. 
*You  got  to  have  the  talent.9  That's  just  what  I  got. 
Talent.  And  the  looks." 

She  laughed  again. 

"Honest,  ain't  I  got  the  looks?" 

"There's  no  doubt  about  that,"  I  admitted. 

I  think  she  meditated  another  demonstration. 

"But  you  ain't  so  sure  about  the  talent,"  she  said, 
with  her  face  very  close.  "  Of  course.  You  don't  know. 
You'll  come  and  see  me  the  first  night  I  get  on — and  give 
me  a  hand — that's  if  it's  in  New  York.  You  know  I 
might  go  on  the  road." 

On  the  road.  It  flashed  into  my  mind  that  poor 
Drynd  would  be  on  the  road  soon  ...  on  the  road  in 
France;  the  road  to  the  front,  where  men  act  their  parts 
without  getting  a  hand;  where  the  orchestra  of  the  guns 
crushes  the  spoken  word  and  heroism  is  a  pantomime; 
where  prompters  read  from  the  book  of  Fate  and  stage- 
managers  mark  the  exits  and  entrances  of  Death.  .  .  . 

"What  are  you  thinkin'  about?"  asked  Vicky. 

"About  Owen,"  I  said. 
23 


342  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Oh!" 

Her  face  sobered  for  a  moment. 

"Owen?  I  suppose  you  would  think  about  him.  You 
got  his  job.  And  you're  givin'  up  what  you  get  for  it. 
He's  got  what  he  wants.  Ain't  that  so?  He  writes  to 
me  it  ain't  so  bad.  He  has  good  times.  He  said  he 
guessed  I  could  get  the  box-factory  all  right.  Well,  he 
has  another  guess  comin'." 

"You  will  tell  him  about  this — this  work  you're  going 
into." 

"Of  course  not!" 

She  clutched  my  arm.  "For  God's  sake,  don't  you 
tell  him.  He'd  have  a  fit.  He'd  know  I  didn't  have  the 
baby." 

"It  would  be  too  bad  to  hurt  him,"  I  said. 

"This  ain't  goin'  t'  hurt  him.  He  ought  to  be  glad 
enough — when  he  leaves  his  wife  to  get  along  by  herself. 
Listen!  you  look  awful  sad.  You  ain't  sorry  you  prom 
ised  to  lend  me  the  hundred,  are  you?" 

"No,  I'm  not  sorry,"  I  said.  "I'm  sorry  only 
that—" 

"Oh,  say!  Don't  you  be  afraid.  It  '11  be  all  right. 
He's  got  what  he  wants.  I  got  my  life,  too,  ain't  I?" 


IV 

Vicky  Drynd's  life,  once  she  had  receded  again  from 
the  immediate  foreground,  began  to  seem  unfixed,  un 
real.  I  had  placed  her  in  the  scheme  of  things,  and 
she  twitched,  flickered,  threatened  to  become  vaporous, 
to  dissolve  out  of  the  picture.  Drynd  was  fixed;  1  was 
fixed;  there  was  nothing  to  hold  Vicky.  Yes,  she  had 
a  "call,"  too;  there  was  something  she  always  had 
wanted  to  do,  and  she  was  going  straight  after  what 
she  wanted.  There  were  no  complexities.  War  was 
not  a  haunting  cry.  It  had  taken  Owen  Drynd, 
and  he  had  preferred  to  let  it  take  him.  So  much 


VICTORY  343 

for  him.  So  much  for  war.  And  I,  having  functioned 
as  a  facilitator,  was  the  logical  stair  for  the  feet  that 
would  dance. 

Well,  as  to  that,  who  could  forecast  the  destiny  of 
Vicky  Drynd?  Who  could  say  that  she  was  not  a  future 
Mimi  or  Pavlowa?  She  had  her  dream.  Seemingly  it 
shone  very  clear,  though  evidently  more  as  a  situation 
than  as  an  expression.  Possibly  this  is  the  most  fre 
quent  fact  about  dreams. 

Take  the  case  of  Aunt  Paul's  little  dream  about  suf 
frage.  She  didn't  want  expression  very  urgently.  I'm 
sure  of  that.  Yet  her  dream  was  extraordinarily 
brilliant. 

And  it  has  come  true. 

The  drama  of  this  realized  desire  had  a  splendid 
crescendo,  for  it  brought  that  parade  on  Fifth  Avenue, 
attenuated  arena  for  so  many  emotional  spectacles. 
Had  I  not  seen  Joffre  there,  and  the  Blue  Devils,  and  the 
kilties,  and  the  draft  boys?  Had  I  not  seen  twenty 
thousand  Red  Cross  nurses,  stepping  in  proud  and  pas 
sionate  steadiness,  faces  up  to  the  glory-light  of  that 
glittering  Coliseum?  Had  I  not  hovered  at  vantage- 
points  for  glints,  through  crevices  in  the  crowds,  of  colors 
significant  and  thrilling,  of  faces  tense,  vivid,  incredibly 
multiplied,  as  if  a  world  were  being  spilled  through  a 
funnel?  Had  I  not  marched  for  miles,  wriggling  around 
corner  congestions,  to  the  brassy  roar  of  bands,  like  a 
thought  flickering  in  the  shadow  of  a  thing? 

The  suffrage  parade  was  a  gesture  that  prophesied 
a  voice.  It  was  a  mute  challenge  with  a  magnificent 
background,  for  here  was  the  Woman  power  that  had 
reached  the  consciousness  of  the  man-world  as  it  never 
had  been  reached  before.  Here  were  the  war-census 
women,  the  money-gatherers  for  the  Liberty  Loan,  the 
war  nurses,  the  stitchers  and  reapers  and  machine-shop 
women,  the  munition-workers,  the  railway  guards  in 
uniform.  And  then  the  "mothers,  sisters,  wives,  and 


344  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

sweethearts"  with  their  service  flags — a  throbbing  note 
in  that  symphonic  spectacle. 

But  for  me  one  figure  transcended  in  interest  all  that 
moved  in  the  vast  procession. 

I  mean  the  figure  of  my  beloved  fat  aunt — carrying 
a  banner! 

I  could  not  have  foreseen  the  stupendous  impressive- 
ness  of  this  revelation.  Pauline  Rowning,  the  serene, 
the  shrewd,  the  whimsical,  the  Successfully  Single  su 
perbly  fat  aunt  of  my  devoted  admiration — carrying  a 
banner.  She  stood  out  for  me  like  the  emphasized  image 
in  a  noble  mural  pageant,  bearing  the  oriflamme  of  a  holy 
crusade,  and  the  egis  of  chaste  good  humor.  She  was 
appalling  and  she  was  appealing.  She  was  allegory. 
She  was  St.  Pauline.  And  her  dress  fitted  her  wonder 
fully. 

I  ran  for  three  blocks,  with  my  hat  in  my  hand,  look 
ing  for  a  hole  in  a  human  barricade  through  which  I 
might  squeeze  at  any  cost  to  catch  her  eye  with  a  salute. 
But  I  was  in  a  bad  place  for  such  an  enterprise.  And 
she  never  would  have  seen  me.  She  looked  straight 
ahead.  In  the  momentary  glimpses  she  seemed  never 
even  to  wink.  She  stared  at  a  goal.  Something  was 
happening  to  her.  Something  was  happening  to  that 
peering,  grinning,  cheering  crowd.  Something  was  hap 
pening  to  the  world.  What  that  something  was  appeared 
on  Election  Day. 

Very  late  on  the  evening  of  Election  Day,  when  she  was 
sure  that  the  ballot  battle  had  been  won,  my  aunt  gave 
us  a  special  supper,  a  superior  supper,  including  a  bottle 
of  Burgundy  she  had  been  saving  for  a  long  time. 

"The  next  battle,"  she  said,  "will  be  the  battle 
against  booze.  But  I  don't  believe  in  throwing  away 
stock  in  hand." 

She  was  radiant. 

"Really,"  I  said,  "it's  a  great  misfortune  that  Aunt 
Portia  couldn't  happen  in." 


VICTORY  345 

"Poor  Aunt  Portia!"  cried  Sarah.  "Think  what  this 
must  mean  to  her!" 

I  suggested  that  it  was  likely  to  mean  much  less  than 
Sarah  imagined.  Aunt  Portia's  anti-ism  was  mostly 
a  pose,  a  pose  that  was  always  ugly,  but  that  once  had 
a  kind  of  haircloth-sofa  respectability.  That  was  the 
sad  part  of  it — that  my  uncle's  wife,  who  set  such  store 
by  certain  newnesses,  should  have  picked  out  a  moth- 
eaten  pose  at  the  last. 

"But  suppose  it  is  a  conviction?"  Sarah  advanced,  ar- 
gumentatively  (she  is  driving  one  of  my  aunt's  cars). 

"I  refuse  to  be  insulting  to  my  aunt,"  said  I.  "It's 
as  much  a  pose  as  her  serving  soup  at  a  soldiers'  can 
teen  on  Twenty-eigh  th  Street  with  a  f orty-dollar-a-week 
chauffeur  heroically  smoking  cigarettes  in  her  limousine 
at  the  door." 

"We  laboring  people — "  Sarah  tossed  out,  with  a 
grimace. 

"Oh,  it's  very  gentlemanly  of  you,  Sarah,  to  stand 
by  the  posers  in  your  own  crowd.  The  hysterical  pos 
ers  get  in  everywhere — everywhere.  They're  cluttering 
France  to-day.  Heaven  knows  how  they  got  over — not 
women  like  Aunt  Portia,  who  can  do  things  if  they  want 
to.  Useless  women.  Just  females.  Real  workers  can't 
move  around  there  without  stepping  in  one.  You  re 
member  what  Colonel  Tannard  said  about  their  taking 
their  maids — 'For  God's  sake,  let  them  have  them. 
The  maids  at  least  can  do  something.'" 

All  this  time  I  could  see  that  Aunt  Paul  was  humor 
ously  meditating  a  remark. 

Suddenly  she  said,  "If  I  thought  you  two  youngsters 
could  keep  a  secret  I  should  tell  you  something." 

"Out  with  it,"  demanded  Sarah. 

"Your  Uncle  George  told  me — voluntarily — that  he 
was  voting  for  suffrage.  I  leave  you  to  judge  whether 
he  deserves  to  be  protected  by  an  appropriate  silence." 

"I'll  protect  him,"  said  I,  fervently. 


346  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Of  course,"  continued  Aunt  Paul,  "I  refuse  to  sanc 
tion  any  disrespect  to  your  Aunt  Portia." 

"We  understand  perfectly,"  said  Sarah.  She  decided 
to  add,  "I  hope  Anson  does." 

"He  does,"  I  said.  "I'm  not  merely  a  spasmodic  re 
specter.  I  have  the  habit.  All  the  same,  Sarah,  it 
will  be  awfully  hard  for  you  to  explain  to  your  grand 
children  that  once  upon  a  time  there  really  were  certain 
women  who  didn't  want  a  certain  honorable  privilege, 
and  who  could,  therefore,  get  along  quite  comfortably 
without  it,  but  who  were  willing  to  sit  up  nights  think 
ing  of  ways  of  keeping  other  women,  who  did  want  that 
privilege,  from  getting  it.  The  female  anti-suffragist 
— not  the  male — will  be  the  hardest  to  understand  of 
all  the  figures  in  history." 

"Good  heavens!"  protested  my  aunt,  lifting  her  glass, 
"  think  of  their  being  figures  in  history !  But  it's  all  over, 
isn't  it?  Vos  metis!  Naturally  I  recognize  your  right 
to  a  reasonable  expansiveness.  In  this  party  you  repre 
sent  the  element  that — eh — " 

"That  turned  the  trick?" 

"That — what  was  it  the  man  said  in  front  of  the  bul 
letin-board? — 'struck  off  the  shackles  from  millions  of 
women.' " 

"Think  of  that!"  murmured  Sarah,  solemnly. 

I  should  have  tolerated  anything  from  Sarah  on  that 
evening,  for  I  knew  that  she  was  elated  by  more  than 
an  election  result.  The  morning  paper  had  a  mention 
of  Rudley's  name,  and  before  noon  there  was  a  letter 
from  him.  She  has  been  reading  all  sorts  of  air  literature 
— frantically.  If  there  were  a  feminine  flying  corps  there 
would  be  no  holding  her.  I  could  see  in  her  face,  too, 
something  that  does  not  spare  those  who  watch  the  skies. 
Guynemer  was  gone.  One  of  Rudley's  warmest  friends, 
a  Captain  Hartlet,  has  disappeared  in  a  bombing  raid. 
That  vista  is  murky,  blood-streaked  at  times.  Always 
it  is  laced  with  horrible  lightnings — clear-sky  lightnings 


VICTORY  347 

through  which  the  winged  shuttles  weave  their  way 
defiantly.  Sarah's  vision  of  the  supreme  adventure 
must  carry  its  specters. 


The  letter  which  at  this  junction  interested  me  most 
was  from  my  father. 

Once  before  he  had  indicated  an  attitude  of  question 
with  regard  to  the  factory.  I  could  not  be  sure  as  to 
what  was  in  his  mind.  There  was  an  element  of  uneasi 
ness,  grimly  hidden  behind  an  effort  to  be  jocular.  I 
knew  his  theories  of  respect  for  the  younger.  He  was 
not  the  man  to  intrude  upon  a  purpose,  even  when  it 
seemed  a  fanaticism,  without  the  gentlest  reconnaissance. 
Yet  there  was  an  effect  of  suggestion,  as  if  to  prepare 
the  way  for  something  more  specific. 

The  new  letter  brandished  a  definite  proposal.  Colo 
nel  Wysant,  of  the  Ordnance  Department,  wanted  a 
man  .  .  .  and  so  on.  Not  a  hint  of  paternal  intrigue. 
Quite  as  if  the  colonel's  wish  had  leapt  out  of  the  sky. 
And  I  was  just  the  man.  My  success  in  chemistry,  with 
which  I  never  had  done  anything,  pointed  to  the  oppor 
tunity  as  with  a  commanding  finger.  . . .  The  colonel  had 
even  hinted  that  there  might  be  a  commission. 

Dear  old  father  man!  "A  commission."  That  would 
have  stared  at  him  with  a  transfixing  fascination — not  as 
a  trick  to  endow  me  with  the  protective  coloration.  I 
have  no  doubt  there  are  many  ways  of  acquiring  khaki. 
It  would  lure  him  not  merely  as  a  means  of  dragging  me 
out  of  the  factory,  but  specifically  as  a  means  of  giving 
to  me  a  sense  of  closer  participation.  It  would  be  in 
Washington.  There  would  be  a  wonderful  outlook  .  .  . 
and  all  that. 

The  letter  left  me  grateful,  and  uncomfortable.  I 
mentioned  the  gratitude,  and  asked  him  to  let  me  think 
of  the  suggestion  for  a  while.  I  knew  I  should  never 
do  the  thing  he  asked.  It  did  not  appear  to  come  as  the 


348  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

appointed  thing;  at  least  at  that  moment.  This  ad 
herence  to  the  path  I  am  following  does  not  seem  ob 
stinate.  Perhaps  I  shall  see  it  differently.  Heaven 
knows  the  look  of  things  changes  amazingly  as  the 
great  drama  unrolls. 

Even  here  in  the  factory  (I  feel  it  about  me  even  as 
I  sit  here  at  my  home  table),  where,  as  one  might  say, 
I  am  shut  in  with  muttering  sounds,  and  the  odor  of 
cloth  and  oil,  I  get  the  echoes  of  the  troubled  earth. 
These  echoes  reverberate  as  in  a  cavern,  a  teeming 
cavern,  holding  its  own  noises,  yet  catching  the  strident 
strains  of  the  great  Outside.  Where  there  are  ears  and 
eyes  there  are  hearts,  souls,  soul  struggles,  wrestlings 
with  intruding  beasts,  the  measuring  of  things,  the  mak 
ing  of  terms,  the  eying  of  threats,  the  skeptical  atten 
tion  to  perpetual  beckonings. 

Skeptical — yes,  I  must  come  back  to  that.  These 
people  about  me  are  skeptical.  Sometimes  they  have 
the  open  sneer,  sometimes  the  emotional  question.  They 
are  a  real  bit  of  the  world,  and,  like  the  rest,  they  have 
been  fooled  much.  We  are  fooled  mostly  by  ourselves, 
but  this  but  adds  sharpness  to  the  sting. 

There  is  skepticism  as  to  this  war  "prosperity"  and 
what  it  may  come  to.  Not  anxiety;  simply  an  incredu 
lity,  a  take-what-is-here  temporizing,  and  bitter  com 
plaint  of  the  higher  prices  everywhere,  as  if  an  invisible 
and  sinister  force — not  other  men's  "prosperity"  or  any 
simple  cause  and  effect — were  devising  the  annoyance. 

The  adding  of  another  state  to  the  suffrage  column 
drew  its  share  of  comment.  Aunt  Paul  would  have  en 
joyed  the  turgid  twenty  minutes  in  which  Axel  Troke 
laughed  away  the  extraordinary  delusion  of  woman's 
equality  with  man;  in  which  a  cutter  named  Grimmel 
described  a  fearful  woman  he  knew  who  came  from  a 
state  where  women  voted;  in  which  Jakow  asked  whether 
women  might  not  do  pretty  well  with  a  game  which  men 
had  so  contemptuously  neglected;  and  in  which  Dolores 


VICTORY  349 

Oronato,  her  inky  eyes  flashing  like  those  of  some  dread 
ful  screen  "close  up,"  cut  in  with  an  excoriating  tirade 
describing,  in  long-legged,  short-breathed  sentences,  her 
profound  scorn  for  the  natural  stupidity  of  men. 

It  was  Browsel  who  summed  up.  He  did  it  briefly. 
"It  won't  make  no  difference.  The  gang  '11  run  it  just 
the  same." 

The  whole  discussion  couldn't  have  been  more  kalei 
doscopic  or  more  inconclusive  if  it  had  been  held  in  one 
of  the  highly  intellectual  forums. 

When  the  manager,  Heiser,  stopped  me  in  a  passage 
way  to  ask  what  I  thought  about  the  suffrage  victory 
I  could  see  that  he  was  choosing  an  occasion  to  be  friend 
ly.  He  made  no  concealment  of  a  special  interest. 
There  is  something  very  direct  about  him  that  would 
render  a  subterfuge,  if  not  impossible,  at  Last  quite 
transparent. 

"My  sister  worked  very  hard  for  it,"  he  said.  "I 
don't  know  whether  you  understand  that  over  on  the 
East  Side  we  have  very  progressive  women.  Jewish 
people  are  great  readers  and  thinkers.  I  was  an  East 
Side  boy — grew  up  there." 

This  confidence  being  a  propos  of  nothing  at  all,  I  found 
myself  much  at  a  loss. 

"You  know,"  he  went  on,  "I  got  my  start — my  mind- 
start,  if  you  could  say  it  that  way — from  a  man  who 
somehow  caught  hold  of  a  bunch  of  us  boys.  I  guess  I 
couldn't  have  had  the  same  ideas  if  I  hadn't  met  that 
man.  No;  I  would  have  been  different.  I  guess  most 
of  the  boys  would  have  been  different.  And  I  had  a 
good  father,  too." 

Heiser  looked  at  me  intently,  through  his  horn-rimmed 
glasses,  then  turned  his  head  reminiscently. 

"This  man  knows  you." 

"  Knows  me  ?"  Evidently  Reiser's  special  purpose  was 
being  brought  forward. 

"Yes.     He  must  know  you  pretty  well.     He  didn't 


350  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

mention  your  name.  Of  course  not.  But  he  told  the 
story  at  a  meeting  of  our  club.  I  was  the  only  one  who 
knew  who  he  meant." 

I  asked  this  man's  name,  and  found  a  feeling  of  inevi- 
tableness  in  hearing  that  it  was  Zorn. 

"But  how  did  he  know?"  I  demanded.  "I  haven't 
seen  him  for  a  long  time.  He  has  been  away." 

"At  Hog  Island,"  said  Heiser.  "He's  been  helping 
to  make  ships." 

Heiser  never  could  have  surmised  how  mysterious  this 
would  be  to  me;  how  puzzling  it  was  to  account  for 
Zorn's  knowledge  of  anything  I  was  doing,  and  to  ac 
count  for  his  expounding  me  in  this  way  without  a 
personal  word  to  say  that  he  was  in  the  city.  Heiser 
was  more  interested  to  explain  to  me  the  wonderful 
picture  Zorn  had  drawn,  by  way,  evidently,  of  enforcing 
some  preachment  about  service. 

"I  wish  I  could  tell  you,"  declared  Heiser,  "how  he 
said  it — how  you  couldn't  get  into  the  war,  but  how  you 
took  a  man's  place.  ...  I  was  astonished.  You  know 
I  never  thought  of  such  a  thing.  Never.  It  seemed 
funny,  too.  I  couldn't  make  you  out,  exactly.  I'll  say 
that  honestly.  I  couldn't.  And  I  might  as  well  tell 
you  I  never  thought  you  could  do  what  you  have  done. 
It  just  shows.  I  could  make  a  point  out  of  that  that  he 
didn't  take  up  at  all — that  intelligence  counts — " 

"Good  heavens!"  I  cried.  "You're  not  going  to  make 
me  out  a  tailoring  prodigy,  are  you?" 

"You  know  what  I  mean,"  Heiser  went  on,  his  face 
flushing.  "There's  a  point  there.  An  educated  man 
can  jump  ahead  in  any  trade.  .  .  ." 

He  was  much  impressed  with  this  idea.  I  fancied  his 
taking  me  as  a  text  ...  at  his  study  club  or  somewhere. 
It  was  startling  and  absurd.  I  didn't  want  to  be  a 
text.  I  wanted  to  be  left  alone.  Even  Zorn's  anony 
mous  tale  was  an  extremely  disquieting  circumstance. 

I  think  Heiser  saw  that  I  became  quite  miserable. 


VICTORY  351 

This  might  account  for  his  fumbling  expression  of  an 
eagerness  to  make  me  as  comfortable  as  he  could  in 
the  factory.  And  he  wouldn't  say  a  word  to  any  one. 
It  was  no  one's  business.  But  he  thought  it  would  be 
the  most  honest  thing  to  tell  me  that  he  knew.  Didn't 
I  think  so? 

I  did  think  so,  and  thanked  him,  rather  shortly,  per 
haps.  My  mind  had  turned  to  Zorn. 

That  night  I  found  my  Hog  Island  shipbuilder  in  his 
eyrie.  A  white-haired  priest  was  leaving  his  door  as  I 
approached  it.  I  was  not  in  time  to  intercept  the 
bang  of  that  door  which  expressed  the  host's  invariable 
emphasis. 

When  Zorn  shuts  a  door  it  is  never  with  the  effect  of 
any  sort  of  punctuation  short  of  a  period,  so  that  in 
knocking  I  felt  the  reluctance  of  one  who  may  be  dis 
appointing  some  inhospitable  expectation.  Yet  the 
moment  he  became  visible  I  knew  there  was  welcome. 

He  was  far  from  effusive.  I  had  to  pump  hard  for 
any  information  I  drew  from  him  in  those  first  minutes. 
Yes,  he  had  been  working  in  the  shipyard,  and  a  huge 
and  magnificent  tragedy  it  was.  Tragedy?  Yes.  So 
many  blunderers  like  himself,  and  the  pitiful  need  hold 
ing  a  hard-pressed  United  States  to  a  fantastic  patience. 
Nevertheless,  he  had  improved.  In  fact,  at  last  he  was 
probably  worth  having.  He  was  going  back  again  in 
a  few  days,  when  some  troublesome  things  were  cleared 
up.  There  were  people  he  wanted  to  see — a  lot  of  them, 
including  the  family  of  one  of  the  shipyard  workers. 
He  had  wanted  to  see  me,  particularly  after  he  heard  of 
what  I  was  doing.  But  there  was  a  mess  of  things. 
Amazing  and  distressing.  And  inspiring,  too,  for  that 
matter.  Mostly,  coming  back  into  the  city  was  de 
pressing.  The  people  were  not  awake.  Lord,  no!  not 
awake;  still  gluttoning,  giggling,  lolling  as  in  the  or 
chestra  chairs  at  a  show,  while  American  sons  were 
sobbing  out  their  lives  on  the  red  fields  of  France. 


352  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

VI 

"Fortunately,"  cried  Zorn,  "if  we  become  depressed, 
we  are  able  to  remind  ourselves  that  it  is  by  the  spec 
tacle  of  those  who  are  left  behind — I  mean  left  behind 
the  front  of  effort.  You  don't  suppose  I  forget  those 
who  are  at  our  home  front  any  more  than  I  forget  Rud- 
ley  over  there,  riding  the  wind  and  looking  hell  in  the 
eyes." 

This  reminded  him  of  Rudley's  sister.  He  had  seen 
her  since  he  came  back.  She  was  a  remarkable  girl — • 
quite  as  you  would  expect. 

I  recalled  the  tone  in  which  Laura  had  said  that 
Zorn  would  be  likely  to  understand. 

"She  told  me  about  you,"  said  Zorn. 

"I  suppose,"  said  I,  "that  I  can't  avoid  being  ex 
pounded." 

"Why  should  you?"  Zorn  rasped  out  with  something 
like  petulance.  "If  you're  doing  a  decent  thing,  why 
resent  discovery?" 

"I  don't.  You  must  know  that.  Yet  one  may  be 
irritated—" 

"Good  God!  Perhaps  you  will  want  to  flay  me  for 
speaking  of  you!" 

"No,"  I  protested.  "I  heard  of  that."  He  glowered 
formidably.  "I  was  simply  puzzled  to  understand  how 
you  would  know;  which  was  very  childish,  I  admit." 

"I  think  it  was,"  said  Zorn. 

"Now,  with  Laura  Rudley  it  was  different." 

"Why  different?" 

"Perhaps  I  thought  of  her  as  not  exactly  sym 
pathetic." 

"Wrong,"  declared  Zorn.  "Utterly  wrong.  In  my 
opinion  you  were  very  highly  honored  by  the  way  she 
went  about  it.  What  extravagant  form  of  sympathy 
are  you  looking  for?  It  is  only  putterers  who  want 
sympathy.  You  can't  mean  that." 


VICTORY  353 

"Thank  you  for  that  defensive  qualification,"  I  said, 
rather  warmly.  "I  was  not  thinking  of  her  sympathy 
for  me.  I  was  thinking  of  her  sympathy  for  the  cause 
— or  the  lack  of  it;  of  her  interest,  for  example,  in  a 
subtle  slacker.  If  I  am  to  be  honest,  maybe  that  was 
in  my  mind." 

"A  slacker?" 

"I  suspect  she  is  going  to  marry  a  very  pleasant 
Anarchist  person." 

Zorn  searched  me  with  his  queer  eyes. 

"Who  is  that?" 

"Lawrence  Pine,  the  poet." 

"She  didn't  mention  him." 

"I'm  astonished.     She  admires  him  tremendously." 

"She  should  if  she's  going  to  marry  him,"  Zorn  said, 
dryly.  "As  for  his  being  a  poet,  God  knows  we  need 
poets.  The  world  never  needed  them  so  badly." 

"But  I  like  them  best,"  I  said,  "when  they  take  hold 
— like  D'Annunzio.  Pine  is  a  slacker.  And  knowing 
her  feeling  toward  him  could  not  leave  me  very  com 
fortable  as  to  any  description  she  might  venture  to 
offer—" 

"I  tell  you,"  declared  Zorn,  with  a  sharp  gesture, 
"that  she  spoke  with  the  utmost  respect — more  than 
that—" 

"Please  don't  console  me,"  I  protested.  "Evidently 
I'm  making  myself  ridiculous  to  you.  I'm  only  glad  if 
this  indicates  that  she's  coming  around." 

"Coming  around  .  .  .?" 

"Warming  up  to  the  war  cause — despite  Pine." 

"Warming  up?  Do  you  happen  to  know  what  she's 
doing  this  minute?" 

"No." 

"Working  night  and  day — literally.  Night  and  day. 
It's  splendid.  Not  dabbling — working,  with  the  energy 
— well,  of  a  Rudley.  At  first  she  was  for  the  plunge 
into  nursing — she  knew  there  never  could  be  too  many 


354  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

nurses.  Then  she  was  dismayed  to  hear  that  relatives 
of  soldiers  abroad  couldn't  themselves  go  across.  That 
ban,  I'm  sure,  will  be  lifted.  But  for  the  moment  it  did 
daunt  her.  She  wanted  to  go  to  France,  to  get  into  the 
thick  of  things.  Then  something  or  other  came  up  that 
made  her  see  how  much  there  is  to  do  right  here  that 
has  no  frippery  in  it.  That's  what  took  her  into  the  tene 
ments — wherever  there  is  a  soldier's  wife  or  a  soldier's 
mother.  It  was  at  this  juncture,  by  the  way,  at  the 
beginning  of  her  work,  that  her  father  came  upon  the 
scene." 

"Her  father?" 

"The  old  brute  has  met  with  some  sort  of  an  illumina 
tion,  or  thinks  he  has.  No  real  contrition,  you  know. 
Has  a  way,  evidently,  of  acting  as  if  past  scenes  were 
negligible.  Took  her  in  his  arms.  Can  you  understand 
such  men?  Wanted  to  know  about  Robert — he  has 
seen  something  in  the  papers.  And  woke  up.  The  old 
fool!" 

Zorn  found  one  of  his  awful  cigars. 

"Well,  he  dragged  her  off  for  dinner,  talked  about 
his  enormous  war  contracts,  paraded  his  adventures  in 
plunder.  I  don't  suppose  he  was  dangling  these  things 
as  such  men  like  to  dangle  them  in  the  presence  of  a 
woman.  He  wanted  to  talk,  to  be  the  great  man  in 
reminiscence,  and  here  was  his  daughter.  It  was  an 
occasion.  I  can  see  him  inflating  himself.  Within  the 
hour  she  was  up.  *I  must  go,'  she  told  him.  'Go 
where?'  says  he.  Can't  you  see  him  stare?  'To  work,' 
says  she.  Oh,  it  must  have  been  a  choice  moment!  I 
gathered  that  she  was  exceedingly  brief  in  explaining 
the  character  of  her  obligations,  and  it's  a  safe  guess 
that  she  left  behind  her  one  of  the  most  astonished  gam 
blers  in  the  country." 

"You've  told  me  something  I'm  very  glad  to  hear," 
I  said. 

I  was  glad  to  hear  also  Zorn's  account  of  the  ship- 


VICTORY  355 

yard  when  that  caine  suddenly  to  the  surface.  There 
was  little  of  himself.  Whatever  may  have  happened  to 
him  physically — and  that  must  have  been  an  upstanding 
consideration — his  own  bones  were  forgotten  in  that 
vivid  characterization.  He  saw  men,  a  babel  of  men; 
it  was  as  if  he  saw  in  it  all  a  kind  of  ethnological  parable, 
splashed  with  strange  colors,  with  streaks  of  grotesque 
selfishness  and  astounding  devotion  —  absolutely  as 
tounding.  There  was  the  rumble  of  an  enormous  life, 
the  mutterings  of  the  elemental  male  animal  in  mass 
action,  droll  gleams  of  individual  perversity  as  well  as 
individual  pluck — spurtings,  bright  as  blood,  of  the  very 
inner  most  of  men.  And  there  they  were,  when 
you  got  the  slant,  like  a  swarm  of  insects  weaving  fan 
tastic  scaffoldings  and  rearing  at  last  those  great  hulls, 
monsters  which,  when  they  had  been  fitted  with  vitals, 
would  snort  into  the  open  sea  and  forget  the  hands  that 
made  them.  The  bigness  of  these  units  of  production 
made  the  men  seem  little,  individually  insignificant. 
It  was  symbolical.  The  ship  was  like  a  state  or  a  world 
— or  a  heaven.  Only  a  mass  could  produce  it.  And 
yet — Zorn  swung  his  cigar  significantly — they  were  a 
mass  of  men,  irreconcilably  individual  in  spite  of  them 
selves,  with  unquestionably  individual  needs — 

"And  desires,"  I  said. 

"Yes,  yes!  I  could  tell  you  of  some  amazing  con 
fessions.  It  is  positively  stupefying  to  find  how  short 
a  shot  some  imaginations  make.  You  must  have  found 
that — the  pitiful  littleness  of  most  dreams.  It  is  the 
difference  in  the  size  of  dreams  that  keeps  men  apart, 
that  makes  the  muddle.  It  is  harder  to  reconcile  little 
dreams  than  big  ones.  Big  ones  blend  at  the  top." 

Zorn,  a  bit  haggard  about  the  eyes,  stood  there  for 
a  moment,  staring  over  my  head.  Then  he  turned  to 
scrutinize  his  cigar,  attacked  it  violently,  and  the  top 
of  him  disappeared  in  a  cloud. 

The  voice  from  the  cloud  went  on: 


356  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Take  the  dream  of  victory.  It  will  make  a  huge 
difference  whether  the  dream  is  of  a  cure  for  the  symp 
tom,  the  present  pain,  or  a  cure  for  the  disease  itself. 
We  don't  want  a  peace  that  is  an  opiate.  There  always 
will  be  the  flabby  millions  who  are  satisfied  with  that — 
dope-eaters.  We  want  the  peace  that  sings  the  trium 
phant  suffering  of  a  cleansed  body.  .  .  ." 


VII 

A  letter  from  Owen  Drynd  told  me  that  he  expected 
to  be  in  New  York  very  soon,  because  everybody  said 
they  were  going  over. 

"There  don't  seem  to  be  no  use  writing  to  her,"  he 
said.  "She's  only  sent  me  one  letter  in  a  month.  I  call 
that  rotten.  She  didn't  say  a  word  about  the  baby. 
Not  a  word.  1  wish  you'd  ask  Lorkey  to  tell  me  how 
things  is  there.  A  man  feels  awful  sore  when  he  don't 
get  letters.  Thank  you,  Mr.  Grayl,  for  all  you  done." 

Lorkey  had  mentioned  on  several  occasions  his  diffi 
culty  in  finding  Vicky  Drynd  at  home.  When  I  told 
him  of  Owen's  wish  he  had  a  sneer  ready. 

"I  tell  you  that  girl  ain't  playin*  straight  with  him. 
I  ain't  goin'  to  tell  him,  am  I?" 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"  Where  does  she  git  the  clothes  she's  wearin'  ?  I  know 
she's  got  the  allowance  money,  and  your  money,  too." 
He  looked  at  me  inscrutably.  "But  she's  goin'  it  pretty 
strong — she  looks  like  the  white  lights — fur  things  and 
sporty  hats.  I  seen  her  in  a  taxi  with  a  guy.  Can  yer 
beat  that?" 

Perhaps  Lorkey  measured  my  depression. 

"He  can't  blame  us,  can  he?  That's  the  way  women 
is.  What  d'  they  care  about  a  man  s'long  as  they  got 
his  money?" 

"Lorkey,"  I  said,  "you're  a  cynic." 

"I'm  on,"  said  Lorky.     "That's  what  it  is.     I'm  on. 


VICTORY  357 

Say,  what  d'yer  think  Sina  said  the  other  day?  'Nothin 
doin'  with  me  on  this  marriage  stuff/  she  says,  *  unless 
he's  got  a  automobile.'  That's  women,  every  time. 
Listen — her  father's  a  butcher,  a  hard  worker.  There's 
six  of  them,  and  Sina  only  drops  in  four  dollars  for 
board — four  dollars !  What  does  she  do  with  her  money? 
Tell  me  that." 

"The  sensualities  of  shopping  explain  a  good  deal, 
Lorkey,"  I  said,  without  thinking  of  him  at  all.  He 
looked  at  me  blankly. 

I  was  thinking  of  Owen  Drynd's  letter  and  of  the  boy 
who  will  be  coming  northward;  who  will  have  a  brief 
day  or  two  in  that  vague  interval  between  the  city  and 
the  sea;  who  will  be  one  of  the  specks  on  the  rim  of  a 
transport  ship,  and  vanish  in  the  great  pause.  .  .  .  The 
sea  will  be  very  cold,  for  it  is  December. 

VIII 

Heiser  handed  me  the  official  letter. 

It  was  as  simple  as  a  scythe.  It  said  that  Drynd  had 
died  of  pneumonia. 

There  was  a  special  word  from  a  lieutenant  in  Drynd's 
company  telling  me  that  when  the  boy  went  down  under 
the  fever  he  had  asked  that  my  name  be  written  in  the 
records,  so  that  notice  was  going  to  me  as  well  as  to 
his  wife.  He  was  a  fine  lad — had  been  made  a  corporal 
two  weeks  before — and  they  were  deeply  grieved  to 
lose  him.  .  .  . 

I  waited  long  enough  to  tell  Heiser,  then  went  away 
to  see  the  cobbler  or  the  dancer,  I  didn't  know  which. 
My  feeling  that  Vicky  Drynd  never  had  told  Owen  of 
her  changed  place  of  living  somehow  persisted.  I  knew 
that  old  Drynd  one  day  had  gone  to  see  his  grandson 
at  the  home  of  Vicky's  mother,  and  that  he  had  not 
been  made  welcome.  It  was  more  than  likely  that  old 

Drynd  did  not  know  of  the  change.     He  avoided  men- 

24 


358  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

tion  of  his  daughter-in-law.  There  had  been  no  occasion 
for  speech  on  my  part.  In  any  case,  the  official  letter 
to  the  soldier's  wife  might  be  presumed  to  have  gone 
to  the  old  address  as  first  given,  where  its  passage  would 
be  halted  unless  the  forwarding  had  been  established  by 
the  sub-station. 

I  went  out  into  the  gray  day  with  rebellion  and  dread. 
Poor  Drynd!  "Died — of  disease."  It  had  been  there, 
in  the  catalogue  of  hazards.  But  he  would  not  have 
thought  of  that.  No  soldier  would;  certainly  not  the 
Drynd  kind  of  soldier.  No  man  not  in  the  clothes  of 
a  fighting  unit  can  rightly  say  what  a  soldier  would 
think,  but  it  is  plain  enough  that  some  things  would  be 
excluded.  Dying  before  the  great  chance  came  would 
be  far  from  the  thought  of  a  man  so  eagerly  welcoming 
the  rumble  of  that  fighting  summons.  .  .  . 

He  had  told  me  how  well  he  was;  that  he  was  thin 
ner  but  stronger,  and  "ready  for  'em."  He  wondered 
if  he  would  see  England,  or  go  straight  to  France;  and 
what  their  chances  were  of  getting  very  soon  into  the 
real  fighting.  .  .  .  One  could  picture  the  browned 
vigor  of  him  itching  to  get  nearer,  to  see  and  hear  the 
stupendous  Thing. 

I  have  often  wondered  whether  he  sat,  as  I  have, 
studying  that  wriggling  black  line  on  the  map,  with 
its  inexplicable  salients  .  .  .  pushing,  pushing,  as  if  to 
straighten  out  the  loops  and  drive  the  line  backward 
until  it  should  run  magnificently  past  the  French  and 
Belgian  borders,  back  to  the  Rhine,  to  Prussia,  to  Ber 
lin.  Very  likely  he  would  not  have  cared  for  maps. 
Old  men  and  weaklings  have  to  be  content  to  push  black 
lines  with  their  eyes.  Maps  are  made  when  straight, 
strong,  gun-carrying  men  get  through. 

And  now  he  was  gone,  as  definitely  as  if  he  had  thrown 
himself  upon  a  bomb  to  save  his  company.  Yet  not 
without  victory.  Ah,  no!  Drynd!  You  may  have 
missed  glory,  but  not  victory.  You  gave  up  your  life. 


VICTORY  35S 

You  neither  asked  nor  received  a  choice  as  to  how  you 
should  do  that.  You  had  nothing  to  gain.  You  went 
away  to  fight  for  a  country  that  has  nothing  to  gain. 
And  you  gave  all.  That  was  victory. 

I  came  to  a  street  corner  where  I  must  decide  be 
tween  the  father  and  the  wife — as  to  which  I  should 
visit  first  with  my  tidings.  It  might  have  been  a 
small  matter.  Yet  it  was  not.  If  I  had  gone  first  to 
the  father  .  .  .  well,  the  story  would  have  run  some 
what  differently. 

When  I  turned  into  Vicky  Drynd's  street  it  was  with 
no  expectation  that  I  should  find  her.  I  fancied  myself 
temporarily  released  from  that  part  of  my  mission 
and  hurrying  away,  with  a  cowardly  relief,  to  take  up 
the  other  part  of  my  burden.  Even  the  grief  of  old 
Drynd  did  not  seem  so  dreadful  to  contemplate  as  the 
chagrin  of  the  wife. 

I  knocked  at  her  door. 

The  silence  for  a  moment  seemed  to  confirm  my 
skepticism. 

Then  the  door  swung  open  and  I  saw  Vicky,  cloaked 
and  hatted,  staring  at  me  with  the  most  grotesquely 
blank  look  I  ever  have  seen  in  a  human  face.  It  was 
not  fright.  It  was  not  mere  astonishment.  It  was  not 
outrage.  Whatever  her  emotions  were  (I  now  know 
something  of  what  they  must  have  been),  her  face  was 
not  able  to  manage  them.  And  she  was  speechless, 
though  1  saw  her  parted  lips,  loose,  as  in  a  kind  of 
paralysis,  trying  to  get  to  something. 

When  I  made  to  enter,  without  being  asked — some 
how  I  felt  little  if  any  instinct  of  tenderness  toward  her 
— she  backed  away,  still  without  a  word. 

Then  I  saw  that  the  room  was  stripped,  save  for  a 
clutter  in  one  corner,  and  that  two  traveling-bags  were 
near  the  door. 

And  1  saw  that  another  person  was  there.  He  stood 
between  me  and  the  windows.  It  was  all  perfectly  clear. 


360  THE   GREAT  DESIRE 

I  have  been  amazed  to  realize  how  completely  the  tale 
was  told  in  that  single  glimpse. 

"Well,"  said  Vicky,  at  last,  in  a  curious,  stagey  sort 
of  voice,  "you're  here,  ain't  you?" 

"I've  come — "  I  began. 

"That's  all  right.  I  didn't  ask  you,  but  you're  here, 
and  you  might  as  well  know — " 

The  man  must  have  made  a  sound  or  a  gesture, 
though  I  neither  saw  nor  heard,  for  she  turned  her  head 
sharply  toward  him,  then  was  back  at  me. 

"Yes,  he  might  as  well  know.  I  don't  care  who 
knows.  I'm  goin'  away — understand?  Goin'  away. 
I've  found  the  man  I  love — yes,  Eddy.  I  don't  care  who 
knows  it!  Who  can  stop  me?  You  can't  stop  me!" 
She  fixed  a  strangely  defiant  look  upon  me.  "Besides, 
we're  caught,  ain't  we?  What  do  I  care?  You  been 
pretty  square.  I  ain't  got  anything  against  you  now. 
1  ain't  goin'  t'  give  up  my  life,  am  I?" 

"You  mean,"  I  stammered,  "that  you're  going  to — 
to  elope?" 

The  word  sounded  droll  when  I  had  said  it.  It  was 
too  decent. 

"Cut  it  out!"  came  the  voice  of  the  man. 

Then  I  really  saw  him. 

He  didn't  look  as  he  had  looked  when  I  saw  him  on  the 
roof  nor  as  he  had  looked  when  I  saw  him  at  the  school- 
house  and  the  wrist  had  saved  him  from  the  draft. 
He  wore  a  mustache,  a  nasty  little  smear  of  hair.  His 
arms  shot  straight  down  into  the  pockets  of  his  long 
overcoat,  and  he  writhed  there  with  his  eyes  set  angrily 
upon  me. 

"  Cut  it  out !"  he  repeated.     "  What's  it  his  business—" 

"It  is  no  business  of  mine,"  I  said,  groping  toward  a 
little  better  ground  and  feeling  the  flame  rising  in  me 
the  while — "no  business  of  mine  that  you  two  should 
love  each  other — " 

"Then  leave  us  alone!    What  in  hell—" 


VICTORY  361 

"I  was  only  going  to  say,"  and  I  turned  to  Vicky  with 
a  sick  sort  of  fury  under  the  softest  voice  I  could  eke 
out,  "that  if  you  love  this  man  there  is  no  reason  in 
the  world  why  you  shouldn't  go  and  marry  him  de 
cently,  because  your  husband — ' 

"Much  husband  I  have!"  burst  out  Vicky. 

" — because  your  husband  is  dead." 

"What?    My  hus—    What  are  you  sayin'  now?" 

"He  died  on  Saturday  morning,  of  pneumonia." 

"God!" 

She  sat  down  on  one  of  the  traveling-bags,  slowly, 
tearlessly,  her  eyes  very  wide.  I  heard  the  crook  per 
son's  feet  move  on  the  bare  floor.  I  myself  was  stupefied 
by  the  cruel  sound  of  the  elemental  words.  Something 
like  a  nausea  drew  a  haze  over  that  bare  room  and  the 
two  figures,  one  on  each  hand,  the  man  squirming  and 
the  girl  stiffly,  portentously  seated  there  on  one  of 
the  symbols  of  their  bargain. 

Suddenly  she  stood  up  and  rushed  toward  him. 

"Oh,  Eddy!" 

I  didn't  look  toward  them,  but  I  knew  that  she  had 
her  arms  around  his  neck.  There  was  no  sound  from 
him;  not  a  sound.  Because  I  was  looking  away — wish 
ing  I  could  throw  myself  into  the  street — I  could  not  see 
what  passed  between  them  unspokenly.  I  know  only 
that  in  a  moment,  as  if  by  something  that  was  a  quick 
matter  with  her — 

"Say,  Eddy — "  she  said,  breathlessly,  "you — we  will 
be  married,  won't  we?" 

I  don't  know  what  she  read  in  his  face.  I  don't  know 
whether  there  was  anything  to  read  there,  whether  it 
was  simply  his  damnable  silence  that  provoked  her,  but 
she  had  him  by  his  wrist — the  same  wrist  I  had  once 
encountered — and  was  glaring  at  him. 

"Do  yer  mean,  Eddy—?" 

"Oh,  hell!"  he  said,  "what  are  y'  playin'?" 

He  had  his  hands  back  in  the  pockets  of  his  coat. 


362  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"That  won't  go,  Eddy."  She  caught  him  as  I  had 
seen  her  take  hold  of  Drynd.  "Is  this  because  he's 
here?  Say  it  out.  D'yer  mean  yer  don't  want  t* 
marry  me?" 

"  What's  that  got  to  do  with  it?  You  knew  I  couldn't 
marry  yer." 

"I  didn't  know  it!"  She  screamed  at  him  as  she 
straightened  her  arms,  throwing  him  back  on  his  heels. 
"I  didn't  know  it!  Yer  dirty  devil.  Yer  never  said 
a  word — a  word — that  you  was — yer  sneakin'  hound, 
yer!  Why  wasn't  yer  man  enough — I  wouldn't  've 
cared  if — " 

He  put  out  his  hand.  "Say,  you!" — this  was  to  me — 
"you  can  go  now,  see?  This  '11  be  about  all." 

"No!"  shouted  Vicky,  in  quite  an  imperious  way. 
"Let  him  alone.  Don't  yer  go,  Mr.  Grayl.  You  ain't 
makin'  no  hit  with  me,  Eddy  Snole.  I  c'n  tell  yer  that!" 

She  walked  the  length  of  the  room,  flinging  her  head. 

"One  of  us  gets  out,"  he  snarled.  "One  of  us — 
quick.  Him  or  me." 

"All  right."  She  was  barring  my  way,  quivering  as 
she  stood  there  with  her  eyes  on  him.  "You  c'n  go. 
As  quick  as  yer  like.  Yer  a  cheap  lyin'  sucker.  I 
got  yer  number.  I — " 

He  reached  the  door  in  two  strides.  For  a  moment, 
with  his  hand  on  the  knob,  he  had  his  face  very  close 
to  hers.  "You  bitch!" 

The  door  crashed  shut  behind  him. 

It  seemed  that  she  was  going  to  walk  straight  after 
him  without  the  formula  of  opening  the  door.  Then 
I  saw  that  she  was  standing  with  her  face  against  the 
panel,  sobbing,  sobbing  violently,  as  if  the  world  had 
crumpled. 

Some  day,  perhaps,  I  might  be  able  to  think  out  the 
kind  of  thing  I  should  have  said  under  such  circum 
stances.  I  didn't  think  of  it  then.  I  was  able  to  do 
nothing  for  a  space  but  stand  there  and  listen  to  her 


VICTORY  363 

inexplicable    sobs  .  .  .  until    she    moved    about,    her 
shoulders  propped  against  the  door-frame,  and  said  to 
me,  without  a  quaver: 
"C'nyer  beat  that!" 

IX 

It  began  to  grow  dark  as  we  stood  there  talking  in 
that  bare  room.  A  low,  horrible  kind  of  gloom  settled 
over  the  place.  She  had  to  gush  that  Eddy  Snole 
story,  moving  nearer  the  window  as  if  to  trail  the  day 
light,  to  keep  what  remained  of  her  realities  from  being 
obliterated.  It  was  sickening.  There  was  no  remorse. 
I  think  she  rather  expected  me  to  be  sorry  that  some 
thing  very  thrilling  had  been  utterly  spoiled  for  her; 
something  that  included  a  wonderful  journey — to  Mexico, 
she  had  it. 

There  was  a  moment  when  I  thought  of  asking,  "Do 
you  know  that  this  man  is  a  thief?" 

But  it  was  too  plain  that  this  would  have  produced 
no  salutary  amazement.  She  never  had  idealized  Eddy 
Snole;  even  if  there  had  been,  as  it  appeared,  a  point 
on  which  her  pride,  or  what  passes  for  that  in  such  girls, 
could  be  reached.  "Thief"  would  hardly  have  been 
crushing.  And  it  would  have  involved  further  partici 
pation.  I  was  through. 

In  the  end  I  told  her  that  I  must  go  to  Owen's  father. 

This  brought  her  to  her  dead  husband.  If  there  was 
any  genuine  grief  in  her  face  it  did  not  show  in  that  wan 
ing  light.  She  thought  only  of  herself.  This  was 
wretchedly  clear  by  everything  she  said.  In  other  cir 
cumstances  I  should  have  blamed  her  less.  She  was 
widowed.  She  had  a  child.  Heaven  knows  there  might 
have  been  a  different  case. 

"You  have  spoken  about  'your  life'  to  me  once  or 
twice,"  1  said  at  last.  "1  don't  want  to  preach,  but  for 
Owen's  sake,  for  your  child's  sake,  make  something  of 
it.  You  will  have  your  insurance  money — " 


364  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"My  what?"     She  was  staring  in  the  sickly  twilight. 

"You  know  that  your  husband  was  insured — that  the 
United  States  will  be  paying  you  ten  thousand  dollars — " 

"Ten  .  .  ."  She  clutched  at  me  with  that  catlike 
reach  of  hers  until  we  were  huddled  at  one  of  the 
windows. 

"Ten  thousand  dollars.  Owen  must  have  told  you — 
you  had  your  notification?" 

"He  said  something.  ...  I  got  a  paper  .  .  .  didn't  read 
it — "  She  made  a  gesture  as  if  to  query  whether  it 
might  be  anywhere  at  all,  now  that  everything  ..."  Oh, 
my  God!  Ten  thousand!  Say — don't  fool  me — I'm 
all  in—" 

"He  paid  his  insurance  premium  every  month  like 
all  insured  soldiers.  He  told  me.  The  money  will  come 
to  you — in  payments — monthly  payments." 

I  could  see  her  straighten  up  as  if  some  elixir  were 
dribbling  into  her  lithe  body. 

"It  will  give  you  a  chance  to  do  something  with  your 
life.  It  will  mean  a  lot  to  you  and  to  your  child." 

"Child!  Hell!  I  ain't  goin'  to  be  tied  down  by 
that!  Ten  thousand  dollars!"  (The  figures  stuck  fast 
in  her  mind.)  "I  don't  care  how  it  comes.  Say!  I'll 
make  the  whole  damned  bunch  sick!" 

And  with  that  elation  in  it  I  thought  her  face  the 
ugliest  thing  I  ever  had  looked  upon. 

Yet  I  knew  that  Vicky  Drynd  had  just  seen,  as  in  the 
white  of  a  stupendous  revelation,  the  clear  road  to  her 
great  desire,  whatever  it  was. 

This  should  have  been  the  end  of  the  Vicky  Drynd 
part  of  my  career,  save  for  so  much  of  it  as  came  into 
that  sad  hour  with  Owen's  father  and  mother  at  the 
back  of  the  shoe-shop.  But  there  was  a  postscript.  It 
was  as  ugly  as  the  part  that  preceded  it. 

The  postscript  came  immediately  after  I  had  bruskly 
left  Vicky  with  her  traveling-bags,  and  just  beyond 


VICTORY  365 

the  quaint  turn  in  the  old  street.  There  is  an  ancient 
church  there,  and  a  high  wall  with  a  jog  that  casts  a 
deep  shadow  when  the  street-lamp  is  lighted. 

Eddy  Snole,  who  is,  I  have  no  doubt,  a  master  strate 
gist  in  such  matters,  was  suddenly  at  this  spot,  and 
placed  so  that,  when  I  was  intercepted,  the  jog  in  the 
wall  was  behind  me. 

My  first  impression  was  that  his  being  there  was 
ridiculous.  It  was  against  all  chance  in  anything  but 
melodrama  that  a  man  should  keep  popping  up  like  this. 
Nevertheless,  he  was  there,  by  the  simple  expedient  of 
"laying"  for  me.  It  was  obvious  enough  that  he  had 
been  waiting.  His  plans  were  equally  plain,  though  I 
have  thought  that  he  was  halted  to  the  extent  of  a  pause 
by  the  situation  in  the  street.  He  preferred  that  he 
should  be  unobserved,  and  perhaps  he  wished  greater 
reassurance  from  the  one  direction  in  which  there  was 
a  vista. 

"You  rotten  cripple!" 

He  began  rather  bluntly,  in  what  I  think  he  would 
have  admitted  to  be  very  bad  form.  He  could  not  very 
well  hope  to  introduce  a  surprise  attack  after  that. 

"You  think  you  pulled  off  a  smart  trick,  don't  you?" 

"  Which  trick  do  you  mean?"  I  asked  him.  If  he  re 
garded  this  as  sarcastic  he  couldn't  know  how  annoyed 
I  was  that  there  should  have  been  a  series. 

"I'm  talking  about  this  one,  just  now.  But  I'll 
settle  for  both  at  the  same  time." 

He  glanced  quickly  over  his  shoulder. 

"It'll  sort  of  ease  things  for  me  to  break  you  up  a 
little  more — put  a  few  more  humps  on  you." 

"Well,"  I  said,  "you  really  ought  to  remember  that 
I'm  a  little  in  the  breaking  way  myself." 

Of  course,  it  isn't  needful  to  confide  to  an  adversary 
that  we  measure  our  own  chance  as  about  one  in  a 
hundred.  To  be  sure,  I  had  a  theory  for  use  at  the  mo 
ment  when  his  hand  should  come  out.  The  theory 


366  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

was  concerned  with  his  legs.  Unfortunately,  his  over 
coat  was  very  long.  There  ought  to  be  another  theory. 
I  was  weighing  one  when  he  said: 

"You  won't  get  a  chance.  I'm  goin'  to  make  a  good 
job  of  it." 

"I  don't  believe  you,"  I  said.     "You  began  wrong." 

Whether  his  blow  would  have  been  started  then  I 
don't  know,  for  there  were  footsteps  at  the  turn  in  the 
wall.  This  meant  that  he  must  wait.  It  also  meant 
that  I  could  be  free.  Yet  I  stood  there  tensely.  I  had 
no  practice  in  sneaking  out  of  an  encounter.  I  suppose 
it  has  a  technic.  There  can  be  an  exalted  moment  in 
physical  danger,  not  less,  I  fancy,  when  the  danger  is 
vulgar  and  belittling,  and  even  when  it  is  still  debatable. 
Perhaps  there  is  a  biting  animal  curiosity  in  the  shadow 
of  a  catastrophe,  a  curiosity  as  to  the  feel  of  danger, 
as  well  as  the  sporting  doubt  in  the  matter  of  its  reality. 
I  thought  of  a  number  of  things,  looking  at  the  silhouette 
of  Eddy  Snole,  though  vastly  fewer,  doubtless,  than  the 
number  that  came  into  my  head  afterward. 

Snole  lowered  his  voice  almost  to  a  whisper.  "These 
are  friends  of  mine.  Just  to  clean  up." 

This  made  me  laugh.  It  was  such  a  feeble  device  to 
hold  me. 

"Say!"  said  a  strong  voice  from  somewhere  back 
of  Snole,  and  a  figure  came  very  close  to  him,  so  that 
he  stepped  quickly  to  one  side,  "ain't  you  Anson  Grayl?" 

I  saw  then  that  the  figure  wore  a  military  uniform. 

"If  you  ain't,"  said  the  soldier,  adjusting  himself  to 
scrutiny,  "you're  a  twin  for  him,  sure.  I'd  5ve  bet — " 

"You  have  hit  it,"  I  said,  "but—"  Even  at  a  better 
angle  I  couldn't  make  him  out. 

"  So !"  He  was  extending  his  hand.  "  Holy  mackerel ! 
Think  of  it !  In  the  wicked  burgh.  And  you  don't  know 
your  old  side  kick, Biff  Hannigan! Who's  your  friend?" 

This  was  because  the  corner  of  his  eye  had  caught 
something,  and  we  both  saw  Snole  running  .  .  .  running 


VICTORY  367 

ardently,  electrically,  in  a  kind  of  blur,  and  disappearing 
at  last  at  the  corner. 

"An  acquaintance  of  mine,"  I  said,  "who  is,  as  I 
understand,  going  to  Mexico." 

"He's  in  a  hell  of  a  hurry,"  grunted  Hannigan. 

"Mostly  your  fault,"  I  laughed.  "I  think  he  heard 
your  name." 

"What's  the  joke?" 

I  was  right  in  thinking  that  Hannigan  would  enjoy 
the  joke  when  he  got  it.  I  can  see  now  this  white  black 
sheep  of  our  Academy  alumni  sprawled  back  in  my 
aunt's  Morris  chair,  laughing  and  trying  not  to  cuss,  and 
my  aunt  sitting  opposite  and  understanding  perfectly 
just  what  he  meant  when  he  expressed  the  profundity 
of  his  grief  that  he  couldn't  have  landed  at  least  one 
on  Snole. 

"As  for  that,"  I  said,  "you  spoiled  a  perfectly  good 
fight." 

But  we  all  understood. 

No  one  enjoyed  the  transfigured  ring-fighter  more 
than  Sarah;  no  one  drew  from  him  more  picturesque 
information.  Needless  to  say,  no  one  elicited  more  cor 
dial  attention  to  responsive  comment.  At  first  he  was 
rather  constrained  and  talked  stiltedly.  I  think  he  be 
gan  with  the  assumption  that  before  my  aunt  he  ought 
to  be  strictly  formal,  perhaps  even  literary.  Aunt  Paul 
soon  cured  him  of  that. 

How  he  had  gone  to  Plattsburg,  had  won  his  com 
mission,  had  boosted  boxing  at  Camp  Upton  (boxing 
and  singing,  he  insisted,  would  knock  a  big  hole  in  that 
war  over  there),  had  invested  some  money  (to  please  a 
girl)  in  an  uplift  house  at  another  place,  where  a  fool 
woman  was  crabbing  the  game  and  spoiling  everything; 
how  he  had  put  a  crimp  in  next  season's  baseball  by 
luring  Bud  Sleight  and  Maxingham  into  the  war — yes, 
and  had  made  Slossing  chuck  a  ring  chance  and  get 
into  the  only  fashionable  clothes ;  how  he  had  everything 


368  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

fixed  right  for  going  across  and  had  just  been  down  to 
see  a  nice  old  aunt  of  his  who  cried  like  she  was  his 
mother  and  gave  him  six  pairs  of  awful  socks — these  and 
many  other  incidents  of  his  whirlwind  life  Hannigan  un 
folded  with  a  kind  of  objective  enjoyment. 

We  did  not  touch  certain  personal  matters  in  Bran- 
nington  history. 

To  complete  the  incident,  Laura  Rudley,  looking  tired, 
but  glowing  as  I  have  not  seen  her  glow  before,  came  in 
while  Hannigan  was  telling  us  that  he  must  go  to  his 
train. 

"Rob  Rudley 's  sister?  Well,  this  is  some  surprise- 
party  all  right!  Wish  I  didn't  have  to  go.  I  heard  Rob 
was  sky -scraping.  Hope  I  see  him  over  there.  He's  a 
sure  winner." 

From  the  descending  elevator  cage  he  shouted  up  to 
me,  "Say,  old  man,  it's  too  bad  that  guy  got  away!" 


I  finished  the  week  at  the  workshop,  with  the  ghost  o^ 
Owen  Drynd  walking  with  me  through  the  passages,  and 
the  faces  of  his  father  and  mother  never  for  a  moment 
far,  as  it  seemed,  from  my  elbow.  And  these  obsessions 
affected  the  appearance  of  the  walls,  and  the  mounds 
of  clothes  and  the  faces  about  me.  It  was  momentous 
to  realize  how  much  is  added  to  life  by  the  subtraction 
we  call  death. 

How  long  I  should  have  gone  on  (I  had  become  in 
fected  by  a  sense  of  a  compelling  urgency  in  the  work 
we  were  doing,  a  sense  of  the  piercing  need  for  every 
possible  ounce  of  laboring  power)  I  cannot  be  sure. 
The  news  of  my  father's  illness  quite  outweighed  every 
other  consideration  for  the  moment.  Other  news  on 
the  same  day  accentuated  the  effect  of  a  crumbling 
world.  Rudley  had  been  shot  down,  his  plane  crashing 
just  within  the  French  lines.  What  remains  of  him,  if 


VICTORY  369 

lie  remains  at  all,  it  is  impossible  to  figure  from  the 
despatch. 

It  was  a  distressing  thing  to  see  Sarah  under  the  stroke 
of  these  two  disasters,  for  my  father's  fever  looked  like 
nothing  less.  We  never  knew  him  to  be  ill,  and  the  men 
ace  at  once  took  on  a  portentous  cast,  as  if  some  great 
tower  that  had  stood  with  its  brows  in  the  cool  blue, 
apparently  as  immutable  as  a  mountain,  were  suddenly 
to  reveal  a  vital  crack  at  its  base  and  to  threaten  a  sud 
den  and  irretrievable  collapse.  It  was  unthinkable. 

As  I  sat  with  Sarah  in  the  train  it  came  to  me  that 
every  other  wish  I  ever  had  known,  every  dream  I  ever 
had  held  as  to  his  destination,  as  to  mine — as  to  the 
destination  of  the  world — was  easily  forgotten  in  the 
poignancy  of  the  one  desire  that  he  might  get  well.  I 
found  that  everything  else  had  been  predicated  upon 
his  strong,  high,  comforting  security.  I  could  see  how 
readily  one  might  be  shaken  in  the  finest  philosophy  by 
a  single  removal;  how  the  will  to  live,  except  as  it  might 
rise  as  an  ecstatic  achievement  of  the  mind,  must  always 
presume  upon  an  articulation  with  other  souls;  how  con 
ditional  any  courage  is  likely  to  be.  That  passion  of 
patriotism,  for  example;  what  splendor  it  must  take  on 
in  the  heart  of  a  woman  who  can  lift  higher  the  sacrificial 
cup  after  visioning  her  boy's  face  stiffly  upturned  in  the 
rain. 

Sarah — not  at  once,  but  by  the  slow  unfolding  of  a 
precious  confidence — told  me  that  in  one  letter  Rudley 
had  pledged  all  to  her.  "And  you  won't  answer  as  to 
that  until  I  come  back."  He  made  her  understand  that 
it  didn't  seem  altogether  a  piece  of  fair  play  to  challenge 
an  answer.  "It  makes  me  feel  good  enough  to  say  this 
— that  you  mean  everything  to  me — that  I  love  to  write 
your  name  in  the  clouds — and  that  I  know  you  are  right 
there  at  the  end  of  the  final  flight." 

"The  final  flight."  I  could  see  that  this  caught  in 
Sarah's  thought  like  a  thorn. 


370  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"I  should  have  done  it  sooner  ..."  she  was  saying  in 
a  moment. 

"Have  done  what?" 

"  I  should  be  over  there  .  .  .  instead  of  puttering  here. 
But  they  are  preparing  hospitals  on  this  side — a  lot  of 
them.  I'm  going  to  register.  That  will  be  something 
real.  Laura  has  done  it." 

"Laura?" 

"She  began  last  week." 

Presently  she  added,  "They  may  send  us  over." 

Father  was  too  low  to  be  conscious  of  our  coming. 
He  looked  gaunt  and  appalling  in  the  old  bed.  Mother 
wore  a  dreadful  quiet,  though  she  met  us  with  a  smile 
that  expressed  for  me  the  ultimate  beauty  of  patient 
affection. 

It  is  snowing  softly,  steadily,  as  if  the  soul  of  the  sky 
were  being  dissolved. 

XI 

Father  was  conscious  to-day.  I  am  sure  he  will  not 
die.  Mother  has  always  been  sure.  She  says  this  now. 
Doctor  Boynton  is  too  old  a  practitioner  to  say  any 
thing  of  the  sort.  He  has  to  be  translated,  like  a  thin 
hieroglyph  wearing  a  soiled  soft  hat. 

I  am  permitted  to  sit  for  hours  watching  that  shaggy 
head  on  the  pillow,  and  to  do  many  things. 

Toward  evening,  at  a  moment  of  the  utmost  quiet 
— at  a  moment,  indeed,  of  fearful  dumbness  when  the 
muffling  of  all  outdoors  seemed  to  be  reflected  in  a 
silencing  of  the  very  pulse  of  home — and  while  I  sat 
there  with  eyes  on  the  wide  window  and  the  woven  fila 
ments  of  a  vine,  a  voice  boomed  out  of  the  void.  It  was 
as  if  a  priest  had  intoned  it  at  the  crisis  of  a  ritual. 

"The  Great  Desire!" 

When  I  looked  about  in  astonishment,  his  eyes  were 
full  upon  me  and  a  strange  recognizing  friendliness 


VICTORY  371 

flickered  in  his  face.  I  was  awed  into  utter  muteness 
by  the  way  the  words  came. 

"How  about  the  Book?" 

He  spoke  with  an  uncannily  natural  way,  quite  as  if 
resuming  an  interrupted  conversation. 

"I'm  living  it,"  I  said. 

"Ah!  Yes — living  it  ...  that  is  good!  Life  itself  is 
the  .  .  .  important  thing." 

He  insisted  upon  telling  me  of  a  dream  he  had  just 
had.  An  absolutely  clear  dream.  There  was  a  wide 
space — it  seemed  like  all  space.  A  rolling  country,  you 
would  say,  though  you  could  not  see  the  country,  partly 
because  it  was  dark,  very  dark,  and  partly  because  the 
space  was  heaving  .  .  .  heaving  as  far  as  you  could  see 
.  .  .  with  bayonets  .  .  .  bayonets  that  heaved  in  two  great 
masses  toward  each  other,  interminably  in  the  gloom. 
And  silently.  There  was  no  sound  at  all.  This  made 
the  scene  particularly  ghastly  and  terrible.  There  was 
no  clash.  No  booming.  Absolutely  nothing  happened 
but  the  heaving  of  the  vast  masses  of  bayonets,  which 
had  a  dark  sheen,  like  phosphorus  on  a  remote  sea. 

Then,  somewhere  toward  the  dim  horizon  he  saw  a 
figure  higher  than  the  mass,  which  came  forward  slowly, 
as  a  man  breasting  waves,  and  grew  taller  as  it  came. 
At  last  it  was  gigantic  ...  he  could  see  the  arms  swinging 
as  in  an  effort  of  striking,  and  the  feet  finding  a  place, 
yet  not  seeming  to  choose  where.  It  was  amazing,  that 
figure,  with  the  heaving  masses  about  its  ankles. 

There  was  a  terrific  instant  when  the  figure  paused, 
and  then  one  arm  was  raised.  .  .  .  He  could  not  describe 
the  gesture  except  that  it  was  as  if  a  man  in  some  dark 
place  were  to  reach  up  to  turn  on  a  light.  ...  It  interested 
him  tremendously  to  get  at  the  details  of  this  image. 
I  grew  uneasy  at  the  length  of  time  he  was  talking. 

The  wonderful  thing,  he  said,  thereupon  happened 
...  a  great  light  did  come,  a  light  as  of  dawn,  a  dawn  of 
a  solemn  yet  golden  beauty,  flooding  the  whole  of  the 


372  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

vast  space,  obliterating  the  majestic  figure.  And  when 
he  looked,  with  a  strained  and  excitedly  expectant  in 
terest,  at  the  heaving  masses  of  bayonets  he  saw  that 
now  they  were  blades  of  grass,  grass  tenderly,  exquisitely 
green  .  .  .  now  waving,  waving  buoyantly,  smilingly, 
now  leaping  like  green  flames  in  the  glory  of  morning. 

He  relapsed  into  silence,  his  eyes  fixed  upon  the  ceil 
ing,  as  if  he  still  sought  the  lineaments  of  that  ineffable 
splendor. 

"Light!"  he  murmured.     "Light!  .  .  ." 

"You  must  rest  now,"  I  said.  He  gave  no  sign  of 
hearing. 

"Old-fashioned  light — nothing  new  about  it,  no  trick, 
nothing  with  a  noisy  name — plain  light.  That's  what 
the  world  needs.  We're  all  struggling  along  too  much 
in  the  dark.  .  .  .  Light!" 

"I'm  bringing  it,"  said  my  mother's  cheery  voice. 
"It  seems  to  me  some  people  are  getting  to  be  pretty 
smart."  She  was  shading  the  little  lamp  with  her  hand. 

My  father  turned  his  head  sharply  and  flung  one  arm 
toward  me  over  the  coverlet. 

"  You  see?  When  there  is  light  I  can  see  your  mother. 
You'll  testify  that  she  wasn't  here  before!" 


XII 

Sarah  went  back  to  the  city  to-day,  assured  that  father 
is  well  past  the  danger-point.  Her  going  on  this  particu 
lar  day,  in  the  midst  of  fresh  snow,  had  some  relation  to 
her  entrance  on  hospital  training.  Father  was  as  insist 
ent  upon  her  going  as  upon  my  remaining.  That  I 
should  for  the  time  take  his  place  in  the  affairs  of  the 
Academy  was  indispensable  to  his  peace  and  progress. 
The  colleges  would  go  through  revolution.  This  was 
inevitable.  But  the  country  must  be  steady  and  stead 
fast  as  to  its  preparatory  schools.  The  new  military- 
Jtraining  idea  must  be  tried  out  to  the  full.  Prepared 


VICTORY  373 

manhood — that  must  be  the  ideal,  and  this  began  with 
prepared  boyhood;  with  clean,  strong  boyhood  that 
would  have  for  cruel  force  a  hatred  strong  enough  to 
build  a  wholesome  force  that  would  ever  put  the  cruel 
and  the  predatory  in  awe. 

"You  know,"  declared  my  father,  "there  never  was 
an  hour  of  peace  that  did  not  have  force  behind  it. 
Peace  without  force  is  a  foolish  dream — tragically  fool 
ish.  Every  natural  thing  tells  the  story  of  force.  Nature 
keeps  her  books  of  discipline  eternally  balanced,  and  she 
never  breaks  a  promise  to  use  force  where  it  is  needed. 
Try  to  elude  force  and  there  is  a  crash  or  an  explosion. 
Of  course,  the  greatest  force  of  all  is  thought.  But  this 
force  needs  a  vehicle,  billions  of  vehicles.  To  make  an 
idea  carry  you  must  make  a  cartridge  for  it;  that  is  to 
say  that  you  must  co-operate  with  other  forces.  Always 
there  is  the  total  sum  of  forces  that  neither  can  be  in 
creased  nor  diminished.  Forces  can  be  directed,  but 
that  which  directs  is  one  of  the  forces." 

"You  are  getting  better,"  I  said. 

His  shadowy  smile  had  its  old  manner,  and  he  drove 
a  fist  under  his  pillow. 

"For  example,"  he  went  on,  presently,  "in  that  matter 
on  the  other  side,  when  the  machine  went  down,  there 
was  the  force  of  gravitation.  But  there  was  the  force 
of  Rudley,  too.  Sometimes  it  seems  to  take  the  whole 
catalogue  of  other  forces  to  kill  a  man." 

We  all  had  rejoiced  when  word  came  from  Laura  that 
Rudley  was  alive;  that  he  was  severely  wounded,  but 
likely  to  recover.  It  appears  that  the  information  had 
been  elicited  by  strong-arm  methods  on  the  part  of 
Wendell  Rudley,  who  is  the  sort  of  person  that  would 
find  out  what  he  wanted  to  know,  and  who  had  com 
municated  the  results  of  his  investigation  to  his  daughter. 
Thus  it  had  reached  Sarah,  in  whom  it  ato  nee  lighted  a 
flame.  I  shall  never  forget  that  illumination.  It  was 
not  happy  news,  but  it  was  news  from  the  living.  What 

25 


374  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

must  it  be  to  a  man  to  have  earned  or  to  have  gathered 
from  the  hand  of  the  Divine  Giver  an  affection  such  as 
shone  in  Sarah's  eyes  when  she  looked  up  from  Laura's 
telegram  ?  She  wrote  a  long  letter  that  night.  I  thought 
then  that  it  was  likely  to  be  the  kind  of  letter  a  man 
would  willingly  fall  out  of  the  sky  to  pick  up. 

Father  had  his  bad  days,  days  of  weakness  and  quiet. 
At  such  times  I  was  close,  but  guardedly  audible.  On 
such  days  he  was  much  irritated  by  a  matter  such  as 
Wigstone  of  our  little  faculty.  I  suspect  now  that  Wig- 
stone  always  irritated  my  father,  but  that  when  father 
was  well  he  knew  what  to  do  with  his  irritation — how  to 
balance  those  forces  he  talked  about.  While  he  was  on 
his  back  Wigstone  was  too  much  for  him,  and  I  made  it 
my  business  to  get  the  man  of  Latin  out  of  the  way  as 
soon  as  that  might  be  done. 

There  was  a  day  when  father  said  to  me,  without 
preface,  and  quite  as  if  the  course  of  his  thought  had 
taken  the  track  of  speech: 

"What  year  was  that  in  which  Lowell  came?  Was 
it —  How  absurd!  You  weren't  born,  were  you?" 

"Mother's  diary  will  tell — if  we  can  find  something 
to  guide  us  to  the  spot." 

I  went  away  to  fetch  a  bunch  of  the  brown  books, 
knowing  well  where  they  were  kept.  There  was  little 
chance  of  finding  the  date,  but  the  diary  would  be  a 
diversion.  I  soon  found  that  father  was  not  very  keen 
for  the  Lowell  date;  that  he  was  ready  to  catch  up  the 
queer  bits  of  narrative  out  of  the  past  set  down  in 
mother's  breezy  yet  always  circumstantial  way. 

I  read  to  him  many  passages  out  of  the  earlier  books. 
He  appeared  utterly  absorbed  in  an  account  of  a  certain 
controversy  with  the  county  authorities  about  a  road 
way.  The  one  thing  that  made  him  laugh  openly  was 
a  short  passage.  It  said,  "Frederick  has  started  a  col 
lection  of  Berkshire  fossils." 


VICTORY  375 

At  a  point  in  one  of  the  books  I  found  trace  of  a  leaf 
torn  out.  This  trifling  but  unique  circumstance  caught 
my  attention  and  I  paused  in  the  slow  turning  of  the 
pages.  Why  should  a  page  be  torn  out?  There  was 
nothing  in  the  page  before  to  offer  a  hint  of  explanation; 
nor  in  the  page  that  followed.  I  sat  looking  at  the  even 
lines,  drifting  away  from  the  incident  of  the  page  to 
thought  of  the  writer,  turning  absently  on  and  on, 
when  of  a  sudden,  by  one  of  those  eye  chances  never  to 
be  explained,  I  saw  it.  It  seemed  to  stare,  as  if  it  had 
been  written  in  blacker  ink: 

Frederick  is  terribly  chagrined  about  Anson's  fall.  He  feels 
as  if  he  never  would  forgive  himself  if  he  had  really  hurt  him. 
I've  had  to  cheer  him  up.  There  isn't  the  slightest  sign  of  a  hurt. 

She  had  gone  back,  Heaven  knows  how  long  after,  to 
tear  out  the  page  that  told  of  the  mishap.  This  after- 
allusion,  a  few  pages  farther  along,  had  escaped  her.  .  .  . 
When  by-and-by  the  Sign  came  there  would  be  no  al 
lusion.  I  was  sure  of  that.  If  there  was  any  equivocal 
line,  I  didn't  wish  to  look  for  it.  It  was  enough  to  be 
lieve  that  at  this  moment,  all  unsuspecting,  the  man  in 
the  bed  was  watching  me. 

But  he  was  asleep.  With  his  eyes  closed  he  looked  as 
if  stricken  by  the  bolt  that  fell  in  those  lines  I  had  read. 
He  had  begun  to  have  a  stubble  of  beard  that  put  a 
gray  shadow  over  his  mouth. 

I  looked  at  him  with  a  stifling  terror.  I  was  afraid 
that  he  might  open  his  eyes  and  see  me  at  this  moment. 
If  I  could  keep  absolutely  still  until  the  terror  left  me, 
the  danger  would  be  past.  Not  to  breathe  audibly,  not 
to  rustle  a  leaf  in  the  diary — to  be  as  still  as  death — this 
was  the  point.  The  necessity  took  on  a  tragic  impor 
tance,  a  feverishly  exaggerated  importance,  for  the  thing 
had  seized  me  suddenly,  with  no  sort  of  warning,  and 
at  the  one  wrong  time  in  the  span  of  a  life. 

He  did  not  open  his  eyes.     He  seemed  to  have  altered. 


376  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

He  looked  guilty.  Something  of  immutability  seemed 
to  have  been  taken  away  from  him.  He  was  my  father, 
and  he  had  forged  my  chains.  He  had  seen  one  of  the 
great  forces  break  his  son,  and  by  his  fault.  The  Church 
used  to  relinquish  offenders  "to  the  secular  arm."  He 
had  relinquished  me  to  gravitation.  His  sin  had  sen 
tenced  me.  He  was  the  person  I  was  to  hate. 

No,  no,  I  could  not  hate.  When  I  could  breathe  right 
ly  again  I  knew  that  even  a  bitterly  whimsical  thought 
of  hate  never  again  could  find  a  foothold  in  my  mind. 
No  hate  for  anything  but  hate,  and  that  needs  pity  most 
of  all.  And  if  hate  should  be  pitied,  what  of  grief  such 
as  he  must  have  felt?  The  Sign  would  have  come 
slowly.  There  would  have  been  times  when  he  doubted, 
and  perhaps  would  have  prayed  that  his  fear  might 
prove  to  be  groundless;  then  a  time  when  he  knew, 
when  it  was  too  plain  any  longer  to  be  doubted.  .  .  . 
He  would  have  suffered  like  one  crucified. 

There  would  have  been  the  time  when  it  was  brought 
home  to  him  that  he  could  not  have  a  soldier  son.  The 
realization  would  have  dragged  him  backward  through 
the  years  to  the  hour  of  that  lapse  so  trifling  in  itself, 
so  momentous  for  him.  Countless  acrid  memories  would 
have  leapt  into  his  mind.  He  would  have  been  galled 
by  a  relentless  sense  of  guilt  which  must  have  seemed 
out  of  all  proportion  to  his  offense. 

Human  laws  have  been  called  cruel,  but  how  much 
less  cruel  they  are  than  the  laws  of  nature!  Man 
searches  for  the  intent.  Nature  asks  no  such  com 
miserating  question  before  passing  sentence.  And  so 
for  all  these  years  he  had  suffered  as  one  beyond  re 
prieve.  .  .  . 

He  was  sleeping  peacefully. 

Perhaps  he  had  learned  to  be  reconciled,  to  give  up 
certain  desires,  to  forget  the  dissonance.  He  had  seen 
me  as  an  active  boy  who  romped  in  his  fetters.  It 
would  be  an  insult  to  me  to  assume  that  he  was  always 


VICTORY  377 

reminded.  Surely  if  mother  had  been  able  only  to 
tear  out  a  leaf,  I  had  erased  for  him  some  of  the  lines 
that  once  lacerated  his  memory.  .  .  . 

But  he  would  return  to  it — as  I  did.  There  was  no 
escaping  that.  It  would  be  a  silent  matter,  deep  in  the 
recesses  of  him,  bitterer,  perhaps,  for  the  length  of  the 
liberty.  It  would  be  something  he  never  really  could 
put  from  him. 

It  was  his  burden  that  I  carried  on  my  back. 

I  read  this  in  that  austere,  unconscious  face.  With 
the  flash  of  the  truth  I  felt  a  strange  access  of  tran 
quillity  .  .  .  out  of  which  arose  something  more. 

I  stood  up,  there  in  the  still  room  in  the  presence  of 
the  man  of  all  men.  I  drew  myself  up,  up.  I  seemed 
to  reach  a  height  I  never  had  reached  before — to  have 
lifted  my  head  into  higher  currents,  to  be  seeing  farther, 
to  be  feeling  the  thrill  of  a  new,  more  commanding  angle 
of  vision.  I  was  as  a  traveler  galled  and  halted  under 
a  burden,  who,  by  the  magic  of  a  spring  or  a  vision, 
suddenly  catches  up  his  load  and  strides  forward  with 
a  glad  heart. 

XIII 

When  I  came  again  to  the  city  at  the  beginning  of  an 
other  April  to  start  my  work  in  the  great  building  that 
is  to  be  a  hospital,  a  new  Terror  was  raging  in  Europe. 
Those  were  dark  days. 

"You  must  go,"  said  my  father,  with  that  gentle 
finality  so  characteristic  of  him.  "You  are  needed. 
Colonel  Thorling  has  asked  you  to  do  very  important, 
work.  I  shall  be  happy  to  know  that  you  are  doing  it. 
You  see  that  I  am  quite  well  now.  As  good  as  new." 

His  hands  rested  upon  my  shoulders,  and  when  I 
looked  up  into  his  face  I  saw  the  old  spirit,  but  not  the 
same  body  that  once  held  the  old  spirit.  Some  day  I 
shall  have  to  go  back  and  take  up  his  work.  It  is  writ 
ten.  It  will  be  my  duty  when  the  call  comes.  I  cannot 


378  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

be  sure  that  it  will  ever  be  to  me  what  it  has  been  to 
him.  But  what  it  has  been  to  him  will  be  a  vital  ele 
ment  of  what  it  may  be  to  me. 

My  mother  said  a  handsome  thing  when  I  was  going 
away. 

"You  know,  Anson,"  she  said,  "a  woman  has  slumpy 
moments  in  her  early  mother  days  when  she  asks 
herself  why  she  has  her  children.  Really,  she  does 
sometimes  go  the  length  of  that.  And  sometimes  the 
answer  doesn't  come  very  clearly.  Then  arrives  the 
day,  if  she  is  a  lucky  woman,  when  she  understands, 
when  she  gets  hold  of  the  Why  of  it — when  she  looks  at 
them  and  says,  'Yes,  God  was  quite  right,  as  usual.' 
How  do  you  suppose  I  should  feel  without  Sarah  and 
you?" 

"It  would  be  dreadful,"  I  said,  with  my  arms  tightly 
about  her.  "I'm  glad  we  acquired  a  good  running  start 
in  that  questioning  era  and  before  you  had  a  chance  to 
change  your  mind." 

"I  just  have  sense  enough,"  she  murmured,  with  her 
cheek  against  mine,  "to  know  my  rewards  when  I  see 
them." 

"No  one  ever  called  me  a  reward,"  I  laughed. 

"I'll  call  you  anything  I  like,"  said  my  mother. 

The  city  did  not  look  grim,  even  if  the  bulletin-boards 
had  their  sententious  dribblings  of  disaster.  Yet  the 
grimness  is  here.  The  will  of  the  nation  has  expended 
itself  in  a  thousand  palpable  and  impalpable  ways. 
Sometimes  that  determination  is  to  be  seen  as  so  much 
splendor,  as  massed  self-mastery,  as  radiantly  polarized 
intent,  as  something  that  waves  and  sings.  Again  it  is 
seen  as  a  steel  hand — the  head  must  have  its  hand.  It 
has,  for  example,  sent  Anna  Jassard  to  prison.  It  has 
put  Lawrence  Pine  into  khaki. 

Anna  Jassard  will  not  relent.  She  will  not,  like  in 
ferior  offenders  against  the  wish  of  the  nation,  mis- 


VICTORY  379 

understand  either  the  cause  or  the  occasion  of  her  dis 
aster.  In  her  trial  she  was  quite  able  to  riddle  the 
logic  of  the  prosecutor.  But  the  larger  logic  re 
mained.  Her  voice  was  a  danger.  It  was  necessary 
only  to  show  the  reality  of  this  danger,  and  her  very 
eloquence  accentuated  evidence  of  the  hazard.  She  is 
in  a  Western  prison,  working  .  .  .  and  thinking;  turning 
that  wonderful  wishing  globe  in  which  she  sees  reflected 
not  the  world,  but  the  single  soul;  not  a  mass,  knitted 
by  long  agonies  of  adjustment,  but  an  individual,  a 
microcosm  arrogating  the  prerogatives  of  the  infinite 
in  the  desire  for  utter  self-expression. 

As  for  Pine,  he  has  written  a  poem,  which  he  calls 
"Men,"  and  which  surely  is  the  manliest  thing  he  has 
produced — a  poem  with  blood  and  fire  in  it,  simple  as  a 
gun-stock,  vibrant  as  a  victorious  cry.  He  wrote  it  in 
camp  and  sent  a  copy  to  Sarah.  It  should  have  every 
honor. 

And  so  the  arm  of  the  mass  reached  out  to  one  dreamer 
and  put  her  into  the  dark;  and  it  reached  out  to  an 
other  dreamer  and  put  him  by  force  into  the  open  with 
other  men.  It  reached  out  for  me,  then  put  me  aside. 
...  It  is  ordained.  We  all  are  fragments  of  a  common 
soul.  The  whole  is  greater  than  the  part.  We  cannot 
share  mass  joys  without  sharing  mass  griefs,  mass  hazards, 
mass  labor.  Nature  has  decreed  that  the  atom  should 
be  unthinkable.  For  our  debt  to  the  mass  the  mass 
must  draw  the  bill.  Anna  Jassard  refuses  to  pay.  All 
prisons  are  debtors'  prisons.  ...  ^ 

The  universe  of  thought  is  the  true  heaven  of  the 
individual  soul.  Here  every  individual  can  be  a  czar — 
a  czar  who  need  not  be  murdered,  and  whose  tenure  is 
eternal.  .  .  . 

By  every  contact  I  realize  that  the  common  expecta 
tion  is  of  an  earth  transformed  by  this  war. 

In  every  such  seizure  humanity  has  cried  out  in  the 
same  voice.  It  has  been  sure  that  the  world  would 


380  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

never  again  be  the  same.  And  it  has  been  right.  From 
each  travail  humanity  has  emerged  with  a  fervent  con 
fidence  that  the  agony  would  have  transfigured  life, 
have  washed  away  all  foulness  and  ferocity  and  some 
how  have  wrenched  from  the  brow  of  sorrow  its  thorny 
crown.  I  suppose  that  again  and  again  the  haggard 
eyes  of  hope  have  thought  they  actually  saw  the  world 
as  "made  over,"  as  utterly  chastened  and  changed. 
And  over  and  over  again  it  has  changed  only  a  very 
little,  leaving  its  hulking  evils  pretty  much  as  they  were, 
with  the  battles  of  peace  to  be  fought  in  the  interval, 
long  or  short,  until  another  war  should  come.  Perhaps 
the  very  last  eruption  of  war  will  find  humanity  like  the 
worlds  that  have  ceased  to  vomit  fire — incrusted  by 
death.  Perhaps  conflict  is  indeed  the  bitter  funda 
mental  of  life,  ordained  like  the  cyclone  or  the  torrent, 
and  the  argument  between  sympathy  and  the  sword  is 
to  go  on  forever. 

But  victory  is  not  to  be  looked  for  in  utter  change. 
Victory  will  be  not  a  dismemberment,  but  an  illumina 
tion.  We  must  be  content  if  the  lightning  that  inflicts 
the  cruel  wound  has  meanwhile  lifted  the  darkness  and 
shown  to  groping  mankind  through  the  murky  way  a 
momentary  glimpse  of  the  goal. 

The  goal?  Alas!  It  may  be  that  there  is  no  goal 
upon  which  all  eyes  ever  can  be  fixed.  Eyes  stare  too 
many  different  ways.  Too  many  eyes  are  blind.  Too 
many  eyes  never  watch  the  horizon.  They  are  follow 
ing  the  near  pits  and  the  near  pleasures.  The  most  we 
can  expect  from  any  glare  that  lights  up  the  spaces  of 
life  is  that  those  who  will  look  shall  see  things  as  they  are! 
My  father  uttered  the  cry — for  Light! 

Perhaps  light  enough  would  unify  the  desires  of  the 
world. 

The  new  boy  in  the  elevator  cage,  an  under-the-draft- 
age  boy,  who  did  not  know  me  and  had  to  be  informed 


VICTORY  381 

as  to  the  floor,  brought  me  to  the  appointed  door  in  my 
city  hive  with  a  fresh  sense  of  the  formidable  disar 
rangement  of  life. 

I  did  not  guess  that  romance  awaited  on  the  other 
side  of  that  door. 

Sarah  should  not  have  been  there — Sarah  in  her 
nurse's  garb.  It  was  not  her  time  for  being  away  from 
the  hospital. 

And  Rudley  should  not  have  been  there.  He  should 
have  been  sitting  up  feebly  somewhere  in  France. 

But  it  was  Rudley,  Rudley  leaping  to  his  feet  from 
that  seat  beside  Sarah. 

Rudley — but  not  the  Rudley  who  went  away  over  a 
year  ago.  That  bronzed  face  was  different .  .  .  the  smile 
was  different;  as  if  the  lips  were  of  a  less  resilient  ele 
ment;  as  if  he  had  smiled  often  when  there  was  nothing 
joyous  before  him  or  within  him.  And  his  eyes  were 
older  eyes.  They  had  the  used  look;  they  had  gathered 
into  a  focus — well,  a  great  war,  the  earth  and  the  sky 
of  it,  the  blue  and  the  red  of  it,  all  that  throbs  through 
the  warp  and  woof  of  sight  and  sound.  There  was  a 
scar  on  his  left  temple,  running  into  his  hair,  as  if  to 
hide  most  of  its  story  there.  Another  matter  I  could 
not  place  at  first,  even  when  he  dashed  forward  with 
that  fine  handclasp.  Whatever  it  was,  it  seemed  to 
mark  him  throughout — as  a  kind  of  blight,  and  I  winced 
in  the  thought  that  he  was  stricken  beyond  anything 
to  be  indicated  or  estimated. 

At  last  I  realized  that  his  left  arm  was  quite  limp. 
When  the  sense  of  this  came,  the  dangling  limb  became 
so  obvious,  so  markedly  pathetic,  that  I  was  as  cha 
grined  as  if  my  blindness  had  been  an  offense  against 
his  infirmity. 

He  had  found  both  Laura  and  Sarah,  and  had  exer 
cised  his  own  resourceful  expedients  for  acquiring  Sarah, 
who  had  the  look  of  a  girl  who  has  been  quite  pleasantly 
kidnapped.  It  became  absorbingly  clear  to  me  that  I 


382  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

had  waited  all  my  life  to  see  Sarah  look  the  way  she 
looked  at  that  moment. 

And  as  to  this  bronzed  boy,  surely  the  extraordinary 
fascination  which  always  had  lurked  in  all  scrutiny  and 
in  all  my  thought  of  him,  in  every  early  emotion  of 
doubt  or  admiration,  were  all  prophetic,  had  I  been  able 
to  understand,  of  this  fulfilment. 

Yet  there  was  a  sad  sub-harmony  in  the  music  of  this 
moment.  Not  by  the  cripplement  of  Rudley;  not  by 
that  suddenly  transmitted  sense  of  the  detachment  of 
Sarah.  Both  of  these  factors  might  well  have  had  their 
inevitable  note.  There  was  something  else,  something 
that  was,  I  have  no  doubt,  whispering  from  those  deeply 
fastened  selfish  fibers  of  me  .  .  .  something  that  wished. 
I  suppose  that  we  are  tricked  into  hearing  such  a  whis 
per  as  much  by  the  spectacle  of  happiness  as  by  the 
spectacle  of  despair.  It  wriggles  its  way  through  into 
our  consciousness,  though  it  be  but  for  a  fraction  of  a 
moment,  before  the  part  of  us  that  rules  can  sum 
marily  order  it  down  .  .  .  the  Me  that  compares,  and  that 
mutters,  "And  you.  .  .  !"  Is  it  this  Me  that  has  mocked 
my  theory  of  a  thought-heaven?  Is  the  mockery  of 
trying  to  think  without  the  mass  eternally  paralleled  by 
the  mockery  of  trying  to  think  without  the  Other  One? 

"You  see,"  exclaimed  Sarah,  "we  won  the  toss!" 

"Good  work!"  I  cried,  jubilantly.  "But  which  toss 
do  you  mean?" 

"The  sky  one,"  declared  Sarah,  "of  course." 

She  shone  like  a  delighted  Madonna. 

"There's  only  one  winning  worth  talking  about," 
said  Rudley,  fervently,  with  his  good  arm  gripping 
Sarah's  shoulders.  "And  I  won't  be  interrupted." 

It  was  hard  to  drag  from  him  anything  like  a  satis 
fying  story  of  his  adventures.  His  part  in  that  last 
fight  I  shall  have  to  get  from  some  one  else.  He  did 
not  make  light  of  anything;  nor  did  his  evasions  seem 
like  a  mere  reticence.  It  is  the  way  with  men  who  have 


VICTORY  383 

done  things,  when  they  are  too  young  to  be  going  back 
ward.  Rudley  is  still  going  forward.  He  is  invalided 
home,  but  he  has  his  plans.  His  work  as  an  instructor 
has  already  begun,  or  is  about  to  begin.  The  paralysis 
of  the  arm  is  not  to  be  permanent.  He  has  this  quite 
arranged;  there  are  doctors  to  quote  for  his  theory, 
particularly  that  sulky  doctor  from  Marseilles  who  per 
formed  the  third  operation,  and  who,  if  there  is  one  man 
on  the  top  of  the  earth  who  knows  what  he  is  talking 
about,  is  that  one  man. 

"Zorn  will  be  glad  to  see  you!"  I  burst  out  in  the  midst 
of  our  give  and  take. 

"I've  seen  him."  Rudley 's  face  darkened.  "There 
is  something  wrong  with  him.  He  is  very  weak.  He 
wouldn't  believe  there  was  anything  he  couldn't  do. 
'It  is  the  young  man's  hour,'  he  complained.  He  had 
been  speaking  of  your  father.  'Nonsense,'  I  said  to 
him.  *  Joffre  and  Foch  aren't  young  men.  Haig  and 
Pershing  aren't  kids.  You're  as  young  as  Wilson  and 
Roosevelt.'  But  he  shook  his  head.  They've  brought 
him  down." 

"Well,  you  ought  to  know,"  my  aunt  struck  in,  "that 
this  doesn't  mean  he  won't  be  up  again." 

But  Rudley  was  not  to  be  shaken.  "If  you  saw 
him  .  .  ." 

I  knew  what  he  meant  when  I  beheld  Zorn  on  the 
following  day,  propped  in  his  funny  bed,  with  a  stamp- 
album  on  his  knees. 

"I  see  you  have  been  reading,"  I  said,  knowing  well 
what  the  book  was. 

"A  history  of  the  world,"  he  returned,  dryly. 

The  strange  room  had  an  order,  though  there  was 
litter  near  the  bed.  It  appears  that  the  German  woman 
from  the  basement  has  been  performing  the  necessary 
offices.  Zorn  would  not  hear  of  any  other  care  save 
the  daily  visit  of  a  Jewish  doctor  he  has  known  for  many 
years. 


384  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Poor  Schmidt  is  a  fool  in  a  good  many  ways,"  de 
clared  Zorn.  "But  he  knows  more  than  most  of  them. 
He  is  a  real  scientist." 

"What  does  he  say?"  I  asked,  bluntly. 

"He  says  I  am  quite  likely  to  die.  That  is  one  of  the 
ways  in  which  he  is  a  fool.  He  knows  only  about  bodies. 
I  am  more  than  a  body." 

I  could  imagine  the  kind  of  dialogue  that  would 
have  jostled  such  an  opinion  from  Schmidt,  and  the 
verbal  reaction  that  opinion  was  certain  to  have  elicited. 
Having  communicated  so  much,  Zorn  made  me  to  know 
that  farther  approach  to  this  subject  was  inexpedient. 
He  wanted  to  talk  of  Robert  and  Laura,  which  he  did 
with  an  awakening  vehemence  that  left  him  very  weak. 
He  pushed  the  stamp-album  away  and  permitted  me 
to  carry  it  to  its  place  in  an  oak  rack  near  at  hand.  I 
kept  him  silent  for  a  time  while  I  told  him  of  my  father 
and  his  new  cheer;  of  the  work  I  had  done  and  the  work 
I  was  about  to  begin,  and  of  every  promising  activity  of 
which  I  had  heard. 

He  asked  me  about  the  Book,  and  astonished  me  by 
remaining  silent  while  I  told  him  of  the  pause  in  its 
career.  He  was  content  to  look  at  me  with  a  measuring 
intentness,  as  if  making  a  profound  calculation.  There 
was  an  instant  when  I  thought  he  was  about  to  express 
something  that  had  kindled  in  him.  But  weakness  or 
a  changed  angle  of  thought  left  him  mute. 

When  I  went  away  it  was  after  a  pledge  that  we 
should  have  a  talk  on  some  evening  very  soon. 


xrv 

How  shall  I  write  of  the  miracle?  How  shall  I  de 
scribe  the  indescribable?  How  shall  I  give  to  an  event 
that  was  terrific,  and  at  the  same  time  supremely  lovely, 
the  word  that  may  escape  a  disfiguring  color?  There 
are  blazing  wonders  that  drop  into  the  heart  like  a 


VICTORY  385 

meteor,  and  that  like  a  sidereal  spark  seem  to  have 
traversed  infinity  before  plunging  through  the  insig 
nificant  shell  of  ourselves.  We  may  putter  over  the  con 
crete  sign,  but  the  splendor  of  the  portent  fills  us  with 
a  feebly  articulate  awe. 

Perhaps  my  blessed  miracle  would  have  seemed  not 
less  of  perfect  beauty  with  any  background  and  at  any 
hour.  But  that  glad  shout  of  the  changed  tide  in  Eu 
rope  had  swept  across  the  water,  and  every  American 
heart  was  beating  a  little  faster  when  I  encountered  the 
private  miracle  and  saw  sky  and  earth,  and  the  whole 
phantasmagoria  of  life,  as  newly  and  majestically 
miraculous. 

That  day  began  unlike  other  days,  first  in  being  a  day 
with  a  sort  of  nervous  brightness.  I  shall  remember  it 
as  having  a  glint  of  strangeness  in  it.  The  morning 
newspaper  was  electrical.  There  was  stupendous  news 
that  presaged  the  real  opening  of  the  victory  chapter. 
I  went  into  the  street  in  an  exultant  daze,  starting  down 
town  toward  the  old  workshop  and  plunging  absently 
in  that  direction  until  some  automatic  reminder  from 
the  brain  cells  that  attend  to  such  things  turned  me  to 
the  quite  different  way  in  which  I  should  have  gone. 
There  were  strange  figures  in  the  streets,  foreign-looking 
uniforms,  archaic  costumes — peasant  girls  in  clusters, 
and  wearing  bright  scarlets  and  greens,  at  one  point 
made  passage  difficult.  I  looked  up.  An  amazing  image 
was  framed  against  a  notch  in  the  sky-line.  At  first  I 
saw  a  scaffold,  clear  and  ugly,  with  a  rope  dangling.  .  .  . 
The  rope  ran  in  an  unmitigated  line  to  the  shoulders  of 
a  man.  The  noose  was  about  the  man's  neck  .  .  .  and 
he  was  smoking  a  cigarette. 

There  was  to  be  a  great  parade,  a  parade  visualizing 
the  democracies  of  the  world,  the  martyrdoms  and 
triumphs  of  popular  progress.  This  was  quite  to  be 
believed  once  a  spectator  took  occasion  to  glance  into 
any  of  the  streets  crossing  Fifth  Avenue.  Yet  it  fell 


386  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

to  me  to  reach  a  first  consciousness  of  the  man  in  the 
noose. 

My  eyes  went  back  to  him.  He  did  not  look  like  a 
martyr.  He  did  not  look  historic  or  heroic.  He  had  the 
face  of  a  portrait  on  a  medicine-bottle.  A  beatific  com 
fortableness  surrounded  the  pivotal  cigarette. 

Suddenly  there  was  a  signal  or  the  rumor  of  a  signal, 
and  the  man  threw  away  the  cigarette  and  stood  up  in 
the  float,  ready  to  be  hung.  .  .  .  And  beyond  him  I  saw 
a  tall,  somber  man,  wearing  a  gabardine,  practising  a 
gesture  of  invocation  or  supplication;  and  a  flaxen- 
haired  girl,  robed  as  Liberty,  and  chewing  gum,  lifted 
her  white  arm  to  point  aspiringly. 

I  think  it  may  have  been  the  man  in  the  gabardine 
who  made  me  think  of  Zorn.  At  all  events,  Zorn  hovered 
in  my  thoughts  for  the  length  of  the  day,  a  day  whose 
duties  ignored  the  parade,  yet  one  continually  punct 
uated  by  the  pulsing  red  notes  of  distant  bands. 

My  anxieties  as  to  that  stricken  friend  had  been  deep 
ened  by  successive  visits,  though  on  the  occasion  of  my 
last  call,  a  week  before,  he  had  seemed  stronger  again. 
As  the  afternoon  wore  on  I  grew  resentful  of  waiting 
until  night,  as  I  had  planned,  for  a  visit  to  that  gray 
street.  The  space  of  absence  began  to  appear  as  hav 
ing  been  shamefully  long.  I  caught  up  my  hat  at  last 
and  hurried  off. 

Zorn's  house  looked  as  gray  as  the  street,  though  I 
entered  it  then,  as  always,  with  a  sense  of  an  inextin 
guishable  light  within. 

I  encountered  a  woman  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs.     She 
had  a  baby  and  a  bundle.     With  both  she  seemed  to  be 
hesitating  before  the  stairs.     The  bundle  was  formless 
and  intricate.     It  did  not  look  to  be  heavy,  but  threat 
ened  complications  if  it  were  not  carried  properly. 
"Suppose  you  let  me  carry  the  baby,"  I  suggested. 
She  stared  at  me  in  a  startled  way.     Meanwhile  I 
took  the  baby.     It  had  a  delightfully  soft,  warm  feeling. 


VICTORY  387 

I  fancy  it  was  a  very  new  baby.    And  I  led  the  way 
up-stairs. 

I  was  quite  near  the  top  of  the  first  flight,  much  con 
centrated  in  my  burden,  and  for  that  reason  in  no  situ 
ation  to  consider  any  other  presence,  when  I  became 
conscious  of  a  pair  of  small  shoes  .  .  .  and  of  a  pair  of 
miraculous  ankles  arising  from  those  shoes;  then  of  the 
frock  of  a  hospital  nurse. 

She  stood  at  the  top  step  and  she  was  smiling. 

When  I  saw  that  it  was  Laura  Rudley  I  still  had  to 
consider  my  obligation,  so  that  it  may  be  that  I  was 
somewhat  brief  in  greeting.  As  it  turned  out,  this  was 
the  baby's  floor.  Since  the  mother  had  to  unlock  a  door, 
I  took  occasion  to  stand  by,  and  in  the  end  to  relinquish 
the  child  rather  clumsily.  I  believe  that  giving  back  a 
baby  is  much  more  difficult  than  taking  hold  of  it.  Any 
way,  the  mother  said  she  was  much  obliged,  and  I  went 
out  to  the  landing,  knowing  that  Laura  would  be  waiting. 

"Go  right  up,"  she  said.  "I'm  after  that  janitress 
woman." 

She  saw  the  question  in  my  eyes. 

"  I've  seen  him  twice  within  a  week.  He  needs  better 
care  than  he  is  getting — at  least  more  care.  He  seems 
willing  to  have  me  come  once  in  a  while.  It  can't  be 
more  than  that  for  me.  I  had  the  day  free  for  the 
parade." 

"Then  you  marched  to-day?" 

She  nodded  and  ran  lightly  down  the  stairs.  This 
meant  that  Sarah  also  had  marched  in  that  patriotic 
pageant.  And  after  that  long  wait  and  long  march 
Laura  was  here,  scuttling  up  and  down  stairs  in  the 
service  of  a  tired  old  man. 

A  growl  answered  my  knock  at  Zorn's  door.  When 
he  saw  me  there  was  an  interval  in  which  he  peered  at 
me  in  such  an  odd  way  that  I  was  in  doubt  whether  he 
resented  or  rejoiced.  Then  I  discovered  that  a  specific 
query  was  working  itself  out  in  him. 


388  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Did  you  know  that  Laura  Rudley  was  here?" 

"No,"  I  answered.     "I  met  her  on  the  stair." 

This  appeared  to  produce  no  effect  whatever.  He 
waved  his  hand  toward  a  chair  at  the  foot  of  the 
bed. 

"It  is  plucky  of  her,"  I  added,  "after  that  long 
march." 

"Plucky  is  a  poor  word  for  it,"  he  said,  firmly.  "There 
should  be  something  finer." 

The  remark  was  characteristic,  but  the  manner  of  it 
was  subdued.  He  appeared,  indeed,  terribly  worn. 
His  mouth  had  the  lines  of  suffering.  His  eyes  were  less 
piercing.  I  wished  that  I  might  have  been  able  to  tell 
him  that  he  looked  better.  Instead  I  felt  the  shock  of 
a  fresh  anxiety  for  him. 

"It  is  pitiful,"  he  said,  presently,  "to  be  a  burden." 

"You  didn't  think  of  burdens  when  you  were  lifting 
them  yourself." 

"But  I  did!"  he  exclaimed,  with  a  reviving  vehemence. 
"I  did  think  of  them.  They  were  often  a  prodigious 
annoyance.  Over  and  over  again  I  have  thought  of 
sick  people  as  an  abominable  nuisance.  I — " 

He  paused  as  Laura  came  in,  and  followed  her  with 
his  eyes  as  she  carried  something  to  a  corner  table  and 
stood  for  a  space  adjusting  the  articles  spread  there. 

"You  must  be  very  good  to  my  patient,"  said  Laura, 
moving  toward  the  bed.  She  paused  with  a  bright 
glance  at  Zorn. 

"Is  he  very  difficult?"  I  asked. 

"Awfully." 

"Won't  obey?" 

"Only  under  positive  threats." 

"Don't  be  severe  with  him,"  I  said,  echoing  the  tone 
of  her  admonition.  "I've  known  him  for  a  long  time, 
and  really — " 

Zorn  grunted.  "The  young — the  rich — to  have  life  to 
spend — to  have  the  golden  hours  of  youth  to  scatter, 


VICTORY  389 

royally,  stupendously!  Then  to  be  old — to  have  spent 
all—" 

"But  you  are  not  old,"  I  protested. 

He  raised  a  hand  quickly. 

"All  the  worse,  then,  to  be  bankrupt  of  life!" 

Laura  moved  away,  as  if  perhaps  to  reduce  the  incite 
ment  of  an  audience. 

"You  are  young,"  Zorn  continued,  "and  you  are  a 
kind  of  philosopher.  Having  your  philosophy  and  your 
youth,  you  should  be  able  to  do  something  with  both  of 
them.  The  trouble  is  ...  Take  the  case  of  your  book, 
The  Great  Desire.  What  is  the  great  desire?  I've 
no  doubt  you  have  it  all  glibly  arranged.  The  desire  for 
money — for  power — a  tragedy;  ghastly,  a  ravening 
mockery.  The  desire  for  fame — a  treadmill  horror  at 
its  worst,  at  its  best  a  kind  of  tenancy  in  the  incurable 
ward — struttings  under  an  imaginary  crown,  foolish  in 
growing  illusions,  the  supreme  vanity,  the  supreme  bit 
terness.  The  desire  for  knowledge — an  endless  journey, 
full  of  sparkling  lures,  littered  with  promises,  but  endless, 
and  because  it  is  endless  stalked  by  disappointment. 
The  desire  for  self-expression — I  remember  your  quota 
tion  of  Anna  Jassard — the  elemental  desire  that  is  not  a 
desire  at  all,  but  an  instinct  that  is  not  to  be  singled  out 
for  sanctification  because  worms  have  it.  The  desire 
for  love — " 

He  halted  for  an  instant,  breathing  deeply,  and  making 
a  slight  movement  of  his  head  as  if  he  had  checked  him 
self  in  the  act  of  turning  toward  Laura,  who  sat  across 
the  room  against  the  shadow  that  lay  beyond  a  window. 

" — the  desire  for  love — the  most  glittering  of  all  de 
sires,  sometimes  traduced  to  an  animal  greed,  sometimes 
merely  the  delusion  magnificent,  sometimes  .  .  .  some 
times  almost  the  perfect  wish." 

He  raised  himself  painfully  in  a  growing  eagerness  to 
pierce  me  with  the  thought  that  was  giving  that  feverish 
light  to  his  eyes. 

26 


390  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

"Let  me  tell  you  something.  There  is  one  desire  that 
has  held  men  and  goaded  men  from  the  beginning.  It 
is  flaming  in  the  soul  of  Europe  at  this  minute.  It  bursts 
from  lips  and  from  printed  pages.  You  will  be  told  that 
it  has  been  born  of  the  war.  But  it  was  born  with  man 
kind.  In  every  crimsoned  gully  of  France,  in  every 
hell  hole  of  Russia,  or  Macedonia,  it  cries  as  it  did 
on  the  rock  of  Rimmon,  in  the  wilderness  of  Paran, 
on  the  deck  of  Hasis-Adra's  boat,  in  the  bloody  chariots 
of  Sisera.  It  rang  bitterly  from  the  lips  of  the  Man  on 
the  Cross. 

"It  is  the  desire  to  find  God." 

He  glared  while  he  spoke  as  if  I  were  contradicting. 

"It  doesn't  matter  that  you  or  any  other  calculating 
philosopher  should  be  blind  to  the  sign.  It  is  older  than 
all  the  claptrap  of  history — older  than  blasphemy. 
You  can  read  it  in  the  hysteria  of  infidels,  screaming  as 
women  scream  in  the  denial  of  their  own  wish.  You 
can  read  it  in  the  worship  of  Agni  as  readily  as  in  the 
scientific  sneer  about  a  *  divine  syndicate.'  The  man- 
ape  strutting  in  the  primeval  forest  didn't  know  what 
ailed  him.  The  educated  ape  in  the  laboratory  often  is 
quite  as  blind  to  his  own  hunger. 

"  I  tell  you,  son,  when  you  have  apprehended  this  cry 
of  the  soul  you  will  understand  the  smile  of  the  martyrs. 
You  will  be  able  to  read  the  riddle  of  your  Anarchist 
woman.  You  will  know  why  it  was  after  the  Marne 
that  the  Blond  Beast  began  prating  about  God.  You 
will  know  why  science,  though  it  thinks  it  has  found 
savages  without  Deity,  has  found  none  without  ghosts, 
and  that  when  gods  are  set  up  by  the  Goths,  and  by  the 
Hindus,  and  by  the  Polynesians,  they  are  the  same  lot 
because  the  same  terrors  and  the  same  desires  run  in  all 
the  blood  of  the  earth." 

He  sank  back,  and  we  who  had  listened  sought  to  quiet 
him  by  our  silence.  When  he  spoke  again  it  was  with 
a  changed  tone  and  with  face  upturned. 


VICTORY  391 

"Do  you  know,  I  looked  for  God  in  the  Church.  I 
preached  what  they  call  the  Gospel.  Perhaps  there  was 
some  gospel  in  what  I  preached.  I  don't  know.  But 
I  didn't  find  God.  No  fault  of  the  Church,  it  may  be. 
I  went  out  into  the  world  to  find  God.  I've  been  looking. 
I  might  have  found  Him  if  I  had  been  poor  enough.  .  .  . 
It  is  too  bad.  ...  I  can  see  it  now  .  .  .  too  bad  that  I 
should  have  received  that  money  .  .  .  out  of  a  grave. 
And  it  is  too  bad  that — that  I  should — " 

He  turned  his  face  toward  me,  then  raised  himself 
once  more. 

"—that  I  should  have  tried  to  find  God  alone." 

His  voice  or  his  look,  or  both,  might  have  prepared  me 
to  find  that  he  had  not  yet  said  the  uttermost  that  was 
in  his  mind. 

"  I  should  not  speak  of  myself.  I  am  of  the  past  .  .  . 
except  that  I  have  seen,  and  may  point  out.  .  .  .  Observe 
that  to  the  very  last  I  am  fooling  myself  with  the  hope 
that  things  may  be  pointed  out!  It  is  astounding!  We 
wait  too  long — lag  and  call  it  patience.  Patience!  It 
is  the  wolf  under  our  tunic.  It  was  being  patient  too 
long  that  gave  the  world  this  war.  Nature  is  never 
patient.  She  says  it — she  does  it!  Give  your  great  de 
sire  a  voice — and  a  fist !  I  don't  know  what  your  desire 
is,  but  I  am  sure  ...  I  am  sure  .  .  ." 

His  voice  wavered,  but  his  eyes  pierced  me  steadily. 

"Admit  nothing  as  an  obstacle.  There  are  no  ob 
stacles  save  those  we  create  .  .  .  not  one.  Be  defiant — 
and  gentle.  Be  masterful — nobly.  Don't  hug  your 
life — fling  it.  I  know  you  won't  fling  it  downward.  I 
can  see  you  going  on  ...  if  you  will  not  be  humble  .  .  . 
if  you  will  demand,  if  you  will  believe  that  everything  is 
yours  .  .  .  everything!" 

There  was  a  moment's  pause  before  he  added: 

"You  should  marry!" 

This  came  from  him  as  though  he  spoke  out  of  a 
trance,  yet  the  saying  of  it  lighted  him,  drew  every  ex- 


392  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

pressive  line  in  his  singular  face  to  a  sharp  edge  of 
meaning,  until  I  felt  myself  to  be  fixed,  besieged  by 
the  intensity,  the  unescapable  challenge,  of  the  phenom 
enon.  I  could  not  hold  him  to  account.  He  was  to 
be  humored.  I  must  be  adroitly  submissive.  I  saw 
Laura  sitting  quite  still.  Her  gentle  quiet  reinforced 
me.  This  was  not  a  feverish  form  of  banter.  Zorn  was 
speaking  out  of  some  immensely  traversed  vision  that 
had  affected  him  to  the  depths,  out  of  an  impulse,  yet 
with  the  clearness  of  a  diagrammed  conclusion.  To 
soften  the  impact  of  our  minds,  to  move  with  him,  to 
answer  him  in  kind — this  was  my  duty  as  I  saw  it  in 
that  turgid  moment. 

"Every  man  should  marry,"  I  stammered,  "who — " 

"This  is  not  an  argument,"  he  cried,  lifting  himself 
still  further  in  the  bed,  until  I  saw  Laura,  from  her 
chair,  mechanically  put  out  a  protesting  hand.  "Not 
a  discussion.  No,  no!  I  am  speaking  to  you.  .  .  ." 
He  paused  for  a  moment  without  mitigating  the  steadi 
ness  of  his  gaze  at  my  rapt  face.  "I  am  speaking  to 
you  by  the  right  of  one  who  has  been  given  to  see. 
Understand  me?  One  who  has  been  given  to  see,  and 
who  can  brush  aside  .  .  .  everything,  everything  that  is  in 
the  way  .  .  .  every  absurd  obstacle,  every  phantasmal 
deterrent  to  the  great  thing.  .  .  .  You  should  marry — " 

His  face  underwent  a  singular  contortion,  an  exag 
gerated  grimace  it  seemed  at  the  moment,  as  by  an  effort 
or  a  seizure,  and  he  leveled  a  thin,  quavering,  but  thrill- 
ingly  vehement  finger  across  the  bed. 

"You  should  marry  —  and  there  .is  the  woman  you 
should  marry!" 

Before  I  felt  myself  enshrouded  in  a  kind  of  white 
darkness  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  Laura's  eyes  and  of  a 
movement  in  her  lips.  I  could  read  nothing.  I  groped 
desperately,  as  I  might  if  pushed  into  a  vast,  opaque 
silence  with  a  command  to  choose  a  way  at  once.  A 
sense  of  outrage — not  as  to  myself,  but  as  to  that  girl 


VICTORY  393 

sitting  there,  her  hands  on  her  knees,  helpless  by  the 
grotesqueness  of  an  impossible  situation.  Yet  he  was 
Zorn,  and  I  couldn't  know  that  he  was  not  very  shortly 
to  die.  He  was  not  to  be  held  to  account.  After  all, 
no  insight  or  theory  influenced  the  thing  I  did  say.  .  .  . 
No,  it  came  out,  it  returned  to  him  in  that  strange  re 
bound  which  even  he  might  not  have  been  able  to  explain. 

"I  will  if  she'll  ask  me." 

I  winced  at  the  sound  of  it,  as  if  I  had  done  some 
absolutely  shameless,  some  irretrievably  catastrophic 
thing — perhaps  the  very  thing  the  sight  of  him  and  the 
thought  of  Laura  gave  me  the  wish  not  to  do.  But  it 
was  out  into  the  solemn  hush  of  that  room. 

I  saw  Laura  stand,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  when 
she  did  so  she  arose  out  of  all  that  I  ever  had  heaped 
about  her,  that  I  saw  her  suddenly  as  she  was,  with 
everything  that  I  had  thought  of  as  beautiful  in  her 
accentuated  a  thousandfold;  and  that  all  I  ever  had 
felt  and  had  denied  to  myself  again  and  again  reached 
out  as  suddenly  toward  her  slender,  illuminated  loveli 
ness. 

She  walked  straight  toward  me  with  a  tremulous  smile 
on  her  lips,  a  smile  so  faint  that  only  the  exaltation  of 
those  throbbing  seconds  could  have  made  it  possible 
for  me  to  see  it  ...  and  dropped  to  her  knees  before  me. 

"She  asks  you,  Anson  Grayl." 

I  suppose  it  was  a  sob  that  sent  me  dumb,  that  in 
the  thunderous  silence  after  she  had  spoken  made  it 
utterly  inconceivable  that  I  should  move  a  muscle, 
that  drew  every  emotion  of  that  moment  into  a  single 
paroxysm.  It  did  not  matter  that  with  either  her  word 
or  her  extraordinary  gesture  went  a  thought  of  the  man 
in  the  bed.  It  did  not  matter  whether  she  had  meas 
ured  or  remembered  or  forgotten  anything  at  all.  She 
was  there  before  me,  Laura  Rudley,  the  rebel,  the  hater  of 
lies,  the  girl  with  the  dream  of  a  world  made  honest, 
a  humanity  made  clean  .  .  .  asking  me  to  marry  her. 


394  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

They  were  my  hands  that  went  out.  They  were  my 
fingers  that  touched  her  hair  and  that  drew  her  face  to 
meet  mine,  though  I  seemed  to  be  watching  through  a 
mist.  When  I  knew  the  living  wonder  of  her  nearness, 
with  nothing  held  back,  in  an  attitude  that  glorified  her 
and  that  seemed  to  shed  an  ineffable  brightness  upon 
the  scene — when  my  lips  touched  hers  the  world  that 
I  had  known  melted  away.  The  universe  dissolved  into 
an  exquisite  instant  that  was  fire  and  music  and  the 
color  of  heaven.  And  like  a  bell-note  out  of  infinity 
came  the  voice  from  the  pillow: 

"Thank  God!" 

I  sprang  up,  drawing  Laura  with  me — rather  roughly, 
I  have  thought  since  (though  she  says  she  remembers  no 
such  matter) — and  turned  to  Zorn  (holding  fast  to 
Laura) — 

"What  have  you  done,  Mr.  Magician?"  I  cried  out. 
"What  have  you  done?  Is  this  true?  I  can't  believe 
it.  I- 

Laura's  fingers  closed  over  mine. 

I  saw  Zorn,  his  lips  working,  and  glistening  lines  in  the 
hollow  of  his  cheeks.  Yet  I  never  had  seen  in  him  a 
more  completely  answered  look.  It  was  as  if  he  saw 
the  dawn  of  a  real  tranquillity. 

He  lifted  a  hand,  slowly,  and  with  something  that 
fluttered  between  admonition  and  benediction. 

"The  way  to  God  is  through  love." 

I  am  still  incredulous.  In  certain  moments  I  am  ap 
palled.  Such  a  happening  is  stupendous  .  .  .  like  the  War. 

One  cannot  reason  about  such  a  thing. 

No.  It  is  bewildering.  In  a  way,  accusatory  .  .  . 
as  if  I  must  somehow  justify  it.  I  feel  guilty.  Deli- 
ciously  guilty. 

I  wander  as  in  a  vast,  sweet  cloud,  in  which  I  hear 
voices.  .  .  .  Sarah,  with  that  laugh,  saying  that  she  will 
feel  dreadfully  the  loss  of  my  restraining  influence. 


VICTORY  395 

My  mother  (in  a  queer  letter)  declaring  that  she  never 
should  have  let  me  go  away  to  write  a  book. 

Rudley,  manlike,  simply  remarking,  "How  did  you 
do  it?" 

Aunt  Paul,  looking  particularly  rotund  as  she  says  it, 
but  never  in  my  long  experience  of  her — not  even  when 
she  was  carrying  the  banner — looking  so  impressively 
interested,  muttering:  "And  I  picked  you  for  the  his 
torian  of  the  Successfully  Single!  Traitor!" 

And  Laura,  insisting  that  it  is  true. 

Ah  yes !  I  have  wanted  to  discover,  to  visualize,  some 
how  to  appraise  that  sense  of  destination  without  which 
it  is  so  difficult  to  fancy  a  sense  of  Deity.  Perhaps,  after 
all,  something  of  that  secret  is  to  be  read  in  joy  of  the 
road. 

The  fact  of  Laura,  for  example,  sheds  upon  the  road 
a  light  pure  and  beautiful,  a  light  in  which  I  seem  to 
find  a  prophecy  that  beyond  the  illusion  of  horizon  will 
shine  at  last  the  true  meaning  of  the  immediate  way. 
I  can  understand  better  than  ever  before  how  an  intense 
foreground  light  might,  indeed,  obscure  our  sense  of  the 
beyond.  The  happy  do  not  diagram  immortality. 

So  that  if,  at  this  moment,  Life  were  to  ask  me, 
"Whither  are  you  going?"  I  should  be  obliged  to  answer, 
"I  am  not  sure,  but  I  am  going  with  Laura." 

Yet  the  way  stretches  onward  .  .  .  onward.  There  is 
to  be  the  puzzle  we  call  Peace,  the  Great  Awakening 
we  call  After.  And  the  world  will  wish.  There  will  be 
red  quarrels,  questions  screamed  out  of  dark  places, 
prosperity  gorging  itself  with  comical  gluttony,  poverty 
cursing  the  system,  mothers  pointing  into  the  pit  of 
sacrifice,  festivals  of  glorification,  maimed  men  at  work 
benches.  There  will  remain  hungry  children  in  stupid 
schools,  bewildered  preachers,  politicians  wandering  in 
circles,  "practical"  men  spitting  on  art,  painted  women 
coddling  dogs,  torture-places  stuffed  with  creatures  who 


396  THE  GREAT  DESIRE 

have  offended,  grown  men  and  women  who  cannot  read, 
but  who  can  think,  groping  .  .  .  groping,  and  listening 
.  .  .  and  wishing. 

One  could  wish  to  forget  all  this. 

One  could  wish — 

"7  will  shake  all  nations,  and  the  desire  of  all  nations 
shall  come" 

Yet  one  has  his  own  wishes  ...  his  very  own. 

"He  shall  give  thee  the  desires  of  thine  heart.'1 

Life  holds  wide  the  Gate.  Beyond  is  a  dazzling  con 
fusion.  And  I  am  going  with  Laura. 


THE  END 


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